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Prussianism and 
Pacifism 

The Two Wilhelms 
Between the Revolutions of 1848 and 1918 



By 

Poultney Bigelow, m.a., f.r.g.s. 

Author of "The German Struggle for Liberty: a History" 
(1806-1848) 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

Zbe f!nicI;erbocl;ec predd 

1919 




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Copyright, 1919 

BY 

POULTNEY BIGELOW 



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Ube ftnicberbocfiec press, Dew loci! 
©CI. A 52 9 187 
JUL -9 1919 



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"And it was no small affliction to consider that he 
had lost in one hour all that glory and power which 
he had been getting in so many . . . bloody battles ; 
and that he who but a little before was guarded with 
such an army of foot, so many squadrons of horse, and 
such a mighty fleet, was now flying in so mean a con- 
dition and with such a slender retinue, that his very 
enemies who fought him could not know him." 

(Plutarch — referring to the end of Pompey 
the Great twenty centuries ago.) 



PREFACE 

T N this little book I have attempted to sketch the 
past seventy years of Hohenzollern glory and 
shame — beginning with the flight from Berlin of 
the first Wilhelm when Crown Prince (1848) and 
closing with an escape equally remarkable by his 
grandson (191 8) to Amerongen. In the matter 
of names and dates any encyclopaedia or college 
textbook could furnish all that these pages offer; 
but while German presses have issued endless mate- 
rial in this field, experience leads me to think that 
much of interest has been wilfully colored if not 
wholly suppressed through official influence. 

It would be sinning against proportion were I 
to weight so slight a sketch with a bibliographic 
appendix or even an index. Much that I here 
print is opposed to popular history as made in 
Germany and still more has come through per- 
sonal channels. 

Of course I claim no credit unless it be for a 
desire to serve my country and at the same time 
tell the truth — rarely a grateful or even possible 



vi Preface 

task. It is to my father that I owe all that can 
give interest to this work. It was he who guided 
my studies and stimulated my taste for historic 
literature. From my earliest recollection to the 
close of his ninety-four years he frowned upon 
every needless expenditure yet was generous to 
extravagance in providing me with books however 
bulky or costly. It was to him that I owed my 
opportunities not merely at the court of the Wil- 
helms but also in the capital of Eugenie and her 
deplorable Napoleon. Above all it is to him that 
I owe a lifetime of study and travel without which 
this book could not pretend to the small portion 
of value recognized by my perhaps too indulgent 
publishers. 

As I lay down my pen it is with the feeling that 
it will never be raised again — not even in self- 
defence! I am now too near the scriptural span 
of himian life to cultivate the mock modesty of a 
sophomore in letters; and have more than once 
yielded to the temptation of garrulous remi- 
niscence-. If I wound the sensitive in any word, 
may he do me the justice to believe that I have 
set down naught in malice. If I awaken a respon- 
sive chord in the hearts of many whose faces I 
may never see, let them attribute this to the for- 
tunate fact that in my long life I have suffered 



Preface vii 

much and seen much; and whilst I have never 
known idleness, still less have I ever been com- 
pelled by pecuniary pressure to surrender my 
liberty as a commentator on current events. 

And so to the critical and the kindly I send the 
benediction of an old man who has sought dili- 
gently for the truth and earnestly hopes he may 
have found perhaps a fragment — however small. 

POULTNEY BlGELOW. 
Malden-on-Hudson, 1919. 



Prussianism and Pacifism 



CHAPTER I 

The Two Wilhelms — Some Points of Resemblance 

nPHE collapse of the Hohenzollem Empire in 
-'■ 191 8 carries the mind to the equally amazing 
debacle of Bonapartism in 1870; for each of these 
short-lived empires seemed to many learned con- 
temporaries the symbol of outward strength and 
internal efficiency. Let us merely recall that 
when Napoleon III. marched forth against Wilhelm 
L, the newspaper correspondents hurried to join 
in what they believed would be a triumphant 
march into Berlin. It was only after rebuff at the 
French Headquarters that they reluctantly sought 
those of Germany. And now once more in 1914, 
we find the same species of ignorance amongst 
Americans of academic eminence and even amongst 
officers graduate from our naval and military 



2 Prussianism and Pacifism 

colleges. In July of 1870 bets at West Point and 
Annapolis would have favoured France. In July, 
1914, bets at the same messes would have argued 
a swift and complete victory for Wilhelm II. 

Of course the wise minority existed in 1870 as 
in 1 91 4, but this country is too busy to concern 
itself with minorities — wise or otherwise. Ameri- 
can publishers and politicians find but qualified 
satisfaction in exploiting unpopular views or lu- 
gubrious predictions. The student of history will 
marvel if he attempts to scan the thousands of 
articles in popular periodicals during the years 
immediately preceding these two tragical conflicts. 
He will perhaps conclude that the liberty of the 
press means the power of an ignorant majority 
to exclude from public notice the reasoning of 
those whose knowledge might prove unwelcome 
to their readers or offensive to advertisers. It is 
difficult to explain otherwise how a great nation 
blessed with every apparent facility for acquiring 
knowledge — free schools, free press, and free speech 
— should in August of 1914 have doubted in regard 
to the aims of the Prussian Empire. There are 
no surprises for the statesman who knows history. 
Moreover there is no moment in the life of a nation 
that is more important than any other. Wars 
and famines, earthquakes and pestilences— these 



Grandfather and Grandson 3 

make convenient aids to memory and help to 
fasten the attention of uncritical readers. But 
if history is to serve humanity, its duty is to lay 
bare the causes of disaster and thus help the legis- 
lator to frame better laws for the future. The 
seeds of Sedan were planted by Napoleon III. 
before even the imperial crown was placed upon 
his head and the flight of Wilhelm II. from his 
army in November of 19 18 was foreshadowed by 
the policy of his grandfather, of whom he was an 
enthusiastic and pious disciple. 

The resemblance between grandfather and 
grandson is not superficially apparent, particu- 
larly as this comparison has been mainly made 
when Wilhelm I. was an old man conspicuous for 
his benevolent appearance and courtly simplicity. 
Wilhelm II. on the other hand dazzled his contem- 
poraries by the almost acrobatic violence of his 
accession to power; the rapidity with which he 
commenced touring the neighbouring countries; 
the boyish enthusiasm with which he discussed 
social reforms, art, music, biblical archseology, 
anything and everything that met his fancy. But 
behind all this, which was foreign to the tastes of 
Wilhelm I., was a deep-down belief in the divine 
mission of a Hohenzollern and in this creed grand- 
father and grandson were one. Wilhelm II. was 



4 Prussianism and Pacifism 

the beloved of Wilhelm I. and the grandson adored 
his grandfather as the perfect flower of Prussian 
autocracy. We may reasonably picture William 
II. on his knees in July of 1914, praying his God 
for information as to what would have been done 
under like conditions by his ever-to-be-remembered 
grandfather. We shall soon see that the answer 
to this prayer, if not from the lips of Wilhelm I., 
was at least in harmony with what those lips had 
repeatedly uttered throughout his long years of 
public life. 



CHAPTER II 

Wilhelm I. and the Revolution of 1848— His Relations 

to England and Russia — Nicholas I. and 

— Last ! 

WILHELM I. lived more than ninety years 
and died peaceably in his bed amidst a 
people who mourned him as the greatest of Ger- 
mans, the source of their power as an Empire. 
Whether the worship of a god be inspired by dread 
of his displeasure rather than admiration of his 
virtue, we need not here discuss. In Prussia at 
least experience had taught that whilst adoration 
of the war lord was usual and perfectly safe, those 
who lagged in their worship were rarely successful 
---save in some other country. Wilhelm preferred 
that Prussians should adore him, because in this 
manner the task of the recruiting officer was ren- 
dered less costly. The first Kaiser was, like his 
father (Friedrich Wilhelm III.), a thrifty and 
simple man. He desired a docile people as my 
neighbour prefers a docile cow at milking time. 
But whilst the farmer may sell a cow that kicks 

5 



6 Prussianism and Pacifism 

his pail, the Prussian King is put to the expense 
of mobiHzing troops, employing secret agents, fill- 
ing prisons, and thus withdrawing from profitable 
work many potential taxpayers. The dread of 
popular agitation was ever in this King's mind and 
whatever his outward aspect of benevolent courtesy 
might be, it reposed upon the consciousness that his 
will was law — to a people in arms. 

Twice had Wilhelm been forced to seek refuge 
under the protection of a foreign flag — the first 
time was when Napoleon I. marched his army into 
Berlin after the crushing victory at Jena (1806). 
He fled then with his mother along the Baltic to 
the Russian border, until they were allowed to 
pause for breath under the bayonets of a brother 
autocrat, the Czar Alexander I. The impressions 
of this year, shameful in Hohenzollern history, 
burned ever after in the spirit of Wilhelm, for he 
was of an age when lads receive their most pre- 
cious lessons and learn to hate and fear and wor- 
ship. In that year he hated and feared Napoleon 
— but he worshipped the autocratic Czar who 
saved Prussia from annihilation; and whose 
successors became as partners in a pious but 
unpractical mission to suppress revolution and 
to guarantee each the other's territory. 

In 1848 Wilhelm, as Crown Prince, was again 



Escape to London 7 

chased from Berlin; this time by his own people, 
who had voted themselves a liberal constitution, 
and proposed to make a federal Germany some- 
what after the pattern of the United States. Wil- 
helm was offered up as a sacrifice to the popular 
clamour; he was secretly conveyed at night from 
the big Berlin palace to Spandau, a fortress domi- 
nating the capital. Thence he was driven to 
Potsdam, and concealed on an island in the Havel, 
where the gardener's cottage gave him shelter. 
Thence he made his way to Hamburg in disguise 
and was concealed in the house of the Prussian 
consul, who secured passage for him, under an 
assumed name, to England. In due course and 
after hardships and dangers vastly greater than 
those likely to meet a modern traveller circumnavi- 
gating the globe, our hunted autocrat pounded at the 
door of the Prussian legation in London and pounded 
long and loudly, for it was an early hour in winter 
and the British are not early risers. Those who 
care for the details of a monarch's life (and I do not) 
must hunt them in the dozens of lives that are in 
any public library. In these pages we are con- 
cerned with a study of this remarkable King and 
his even more remarkable grandson, only so far 
as they together explain the colossal crash of 191 8. 
Wilhelml., after 1848, worshipped but one God 



8 Prussianism and Pacifism 

— a Prussian God — a God in spiked helmet and 
rasping voice — a God who promised that never 
again should the people dictate to their divinely- 
appointed King; never again should Prussia be 
anything but a military state ruled by their Ho- 
henzollern war lord. Piety of the old-fashioned 
God-fearing kind was part of Wilhelm. He had 
little imagination, but a natural love of discipline 
and tidiness which fitted well into his Prussian 
surroundings and made of him the favourite toast 
of every mess room between Ehrenbreitstein and 
Memel. Had he been a man of imagination or 
had he even associated with men of the world, he 
would in his English exile have absorbed some 
useful, if novel, ideas. In 1848, nearly ever\^ 
throne was emptied and nearly every champion 
of autocracy fled into hiding — most of them taking 
refuge in the world's temple of civil liberty, under 
the shadow of Westminster. Here might Wilhelm 
have pertinently enquired how it happened that 
whilst his land of the military goose step was now a 
political bedlam, London and Glasgow went about 
their business much as usual; Queen Victoria 
drove out daily with her beloved German hus- 
band; and they felt sorry for dear, good Louis 
Philippe — and also for their cousin of Potsdam. 
But the idea that Englishmen would rear barri- 



London Exile 9 

cades when they had legal redress in other ways — 
that was indeed ridiculous to them no less than to 
their subjects. Wilhelm was profoundly bored in 
England, where he was but one of many royal 
refugees and where he sadly missed the parade 
ground movements that had ever been his delight. 
Bitterly he blamed his brother (Friedrich Wilhelm 
IV.) for having exiled him to the sooty solitude of 
London when the Romanoff court would have 
been immensely more agreeable; for was not his 
sister wife of Nicholas I.? Wilhelm had made 
frequent visits to that court — more even than 
those of Wilhelm II. to the Vatican. Nicholas 
had much of the Wilhelm in him — he was of ma- 
jestic and soldierly stature — he was a devout 
believer in absolute military rule — he knew no 
personal fear and, next to the cholera, knew of 
no disease so pernicious as public discussion. 
Wilhelm was always happy with Nicholas, for 
at that court were never heard any clamours for 
a constitution. Siberia was full of deported sub- 
jects whose crime consisted in thinking aloud, 
but Wilhelm did not see these. He saw only the 
line upon line of well-drilled guards and heard 
only their shouts of loyalty which resounded au- 
tomatically on the appearance of their war lord. 
He did not see beyond these lines ; his imagination 



10 Prussianism and Pacifism 

did not help him to feel that a great people can 
only be ruled through fear when the ruler is a 
Nicholas I. Little did he dream of another Nicho- 
las whose Russia, in 191 8, would become a wilder- 
ness of Bolshevik barbarism. The parallel is 
ghastly — Nicholas the first and second; Wilhelm 
first and — second or last ! 



CHAPTER III 

Hohenzollern Education — House Law of Kings — 
1848 — Imperial Crown Rejected by Friedrich 
Wilhelm IV., 1849 — Revolution Suppressed and 
Autocracy Triumphant 

nPHE house of Hohenzollern is remarkable 
■*• amongst European dynasties because of the 
persistence with which they have pursued a fixed 
policy, and still more because of the family dis- 
cipline which they have exercised over a long line 
of rulers. 

Between the first and last of the Hohenzollems 
have appeared exceptions; very few, however, 
and these have but intensified the faith of their 
successors in rule by divine right, or in other words 
— the sword. A Prussian prince at the age of ten 
is already buttoned up in the "King's coat," and 
drilled on the Potsdam parade; and from that 
time on he is merely one more Prussian officer 
over whom the King has power of life and death 
— of promotion or degradation — of happiness or 
misery. Nor would any Hohenzollern wish it 



12 Prussianism and Pacifism 

otherwise. Frederick II., when young, did, it is 
true, seek to desert from the army; but he lived 
to regret the follies of his youth and in his old age 
to make the military yoke an ornament dear to 
Prussians. 

The Hohenzollern ruler owes allegiance — not to 
his people, much less to a constitution — but first, 
last, and uninterruptedly to the dynasty whose 
law is embodied in successive mandates or testa- 
mentary epistles piously treasured and expounded 
for the benefit of the next in order of succession. 
The law of the land is that which governs the 
people in their civil relations; but the house law 
of the Hohenzollerns is one that is from above 
and is known only to the initiate who draw author- 
ity from heaven. There is a strange and almost 
paradoxical analogy between the pretensions of a 
Lutheran King on the Spree and a Papal Bishop 
on the Tiber — each claims to rule by right divine, 
each claims to be above the civil or common law, 
and each has a canon or house law known only 
to the initiate and expounded only by the repre- 
sentative of a Holy Majesty. In each of these 
dynasties have happened momentary exceptions, 
to which loyal chroniclers have referred as regret- 
table acts of weakness; but in general the policy 
of Rome, as that of Berlin, has been consistently 



Breaks His Sword 13 

one of autocracy. Of course, the corollary to this 
is that whilst Pope and Kaiser suppress liberty 
amongst their own subjects, they as energetically 
encourage rebellion elsewhere whenever a political 
advantage may be thereby secured. 

When Wilhelm I. fled from Berlin in 1848, he 
was the target for many lampoons — he being held 
responsible for the order to fire upon the people 
who had assembled in front of the palace, to cheer 
the King, his brother. There had been much 
confusion at the palace, and reports of what hap- 
pened are conflicting; but there can be no doubt 
that Wilhelm urged vehemently the immediate 
massacre of all civilians who dared disobey the 
police; that he flung his sword in a rage at the 
King's feet and declared his uniform dishonoured 
by the cowardly concessions made to a mob. 

The details of this revolution are in my History 
of the German Struggle for Liberty, a book which, 
to my surprise, gave offence to Wilhelm II. on its 
appearance in 1896. Without therefore more than 
noting the interesting fact that this revolution 
was practically bloodless excepting for the military 
provocation, let us bear in mind that those who 
met in congress at Frankfort (1849) to frame a 
constitution for the new Fatherland demanded 
that there should be a United States of Ger- 



14 Prussianism and Pacifism 

many and that its head should wear an Imperial 
Crown. 

But the canon law of the HohenzoUem deemed 
it sacrilege to recognize the people as other than 
dutiful subjects. Their code taught that it was 
for the King to graciously give and for the people 
dutifully to accept. The pariiamentary deputa- 
tion was therefore treated as an unauthorized 
band of impertinent busybodies; the Prussian 
regiments had meanwhile been quietly mobilized; 
Wilhelm I. (then Crown Prince) had been recalled 
from England under vows of loyalty to the new 
order of things and very soon the last vestige of 
democracy disappeared — and the last of the 
democrats dreamed their dreams behind the bars 
of Prussian prisons or on emigrant ships bound 
for Milwaukee by way of Hoboken. 

Wilhelm I. was only two months in exile when 
loud clamour arose for his recall — and with him 
the same regiments that had fired on the people. 
Wilhelm I. had not changed — he was consistent 
throughout his life. The people had had a momen- 
tary brain storm like the tantrums of a child, but 
it was soon over ; and the same mob that yesterday 
yearned for a republic, today glorified their abso- 
lute monarch and hastened to forget all but the 
hereditary loyalty of a servile race. 



Return to Berlin 15 

Wilhelm once more commanded his well-drilled 
Prussians. The King (Friedrich Wilhelm IV.), 
who but a few weeks before had paraded the streets 
of his capital dressed in the colours of the revolu- 
tion, now ordered his troops to hunt down every- 
thing that looked other than monarchical — whether 
in Prussia or in neighbouring German states. 
Wilhelm acquitted himself of this task to the 
satisfaction of the Yunker party and particularly 
of his brother-in-law Nicholas of Russia, who was 
very angry with Friedrich Wilhelm IV. for his 
weakness in regard to the Berlin mob. Indeed 
he needed but slight provocation to have marched 
a Russian army against the German Republic as 
he gladly did against that of Hungary — and most 
bloodily did he do his work amongst the Magyars. 

And so closes the year 1849 — fifty-three years 
had passed in the life of Wilhelm I. and he felt 
happy that Russia and Prussia were now staunch 
allies in the cause of autocracy on earth and a 
German God in heaven. 



CHAPTER IV 

Romanoff and Hohenzollern — Conspiracy of Auto- 
crats — Russian Aid to Prussia — Polish 
Insurrection 

nPHE personal ties which bound the courts of 
-*■ Peterhof and Potsdam for half a century- 
were founded not merely in sympathetic blood 
kinship but in a common dread of civil liberty. 
In those days the mere word Constitution meant 
chaos to both Nicholas and Wilhelm, and while 
the HohenzoUerns have been compelled on rare 
occasions to mention that hated name in public 
it was only to gain time — much as we rattle a 
measure of oats before the horse whom we desire 
to coax from the pasture. In 1815, at the outset 
of the Waterloo campaign, Friedrich Wilhelm III. 
solemnly promised his people a constitution. 
They believed him — and he broke his pledge. In 
1848 his successor renewed the promise, but in 
the year following forgot it. Wilhelm I. did the 
same when the opportunity offered. Indeed one 

16 



Napoleon TIL and Nicholas I. 17 

must feel, in reading HohenzoUern history, that 
every concession to the people was made with a 
mental reservation which permitted the King to 
tear up any such contract the moment he felt 
himself out of danger. 

Yet we are here considering rulers of otherwise 
respectable lives — who gave their time loyally 
to the duties of their high station — who never 
scandalized the world as did the latter-day French 
kings by wasting the people's taxes on frivolous 
amusement and shameless women. Nicholas and 
his successor (Alexander II.) held the creed of 
autocracy as an inherited faith and they loyally 
helped their HohenzoUern neighbour because 
together they represented sound and safe govern- 
ment. 

In 1830 the Czar felt so much offended at Louis 
Philippe for accepting his crown from the people 
that he refused to address him with the formula 
of "my brother." And when Louis Napoleon be- 
came Emperor (1852) he was even more indignant; 
and he precipitated the Crimean War as a puni- 
tive expedition against an insolent rival who had 
dared to accept an Imperial crown — not from the 
hand of God, but from a popular vote. Nicholas 
died of a broken heart (1856) in the midst of a 
war which humiliated his autocratic pride; for 



1 8 Prussianism and Pacifism 

like Wilhelm II., in 1914, he had anticipated an 
easy victory over the French and English and a 
correspondingly valuable triumph of his pet prin- 
ciples. Prussia helped Nicholas by a neutrality 
so benevolent that it prevented Austria from 
joining France and England; and for this she 
reaped substantial aid in her own day of need. 
Let us anticipate and dismiss the Russian element 
in Prussian events by reminding the student that 
when (1859) Napoleon III. gave Italy her unity, 
he puzzled Europe by a sudden armistice imme- 
diately after two successful battles at Solferino 
and Magenta. Why should Napoleon withdraw 
before a defeated Austrian army, asked the un- 
initiated? These must be referred to the Hohen- 
zollern or Romanoff archives — if so be any have 
escaped the red reformers. Neither Russia nor 
Prussia could endure the triumph of a popular 
movement in Italy, much less a disaster to Austria 
that might once more raise up a republic in Hun- 
gary and popular agitation in Bohemia. Conse- 
quently rumblings of war reached Napoleon in 
Piedmont and still more ominous rumours of 
rebellion reached the ears of Franz Josef. Each 
was equally keen to close the contest in Italy, the 
one for the sake of his German frontier, the other 
to look after his polyglot subjects. But neither 



Polish Rebellion, 1863 19 

the French nor the Austrian monarchs pubHshed 
the real reasons of their truce. 

In 1863 Berlin and Moscow once more proved 
the force of their union, when bleeding Poland 
was fighting desperately for freedom — one of those 
periodic struggles in which peasants armed only 
with pitchforks and hatred of the oppressor hurl 
themselves against the guns of well-drilled troops 
and die with liberty on their lips. Poland has 
been for more than a century the unwilling victim 
of Prussification on one side and Russification on 
the other; and the result has been but one more 
proof that whilst bodies may be enslaved and 
minds oppressed by ignorance, the spirit is a thing 
of God and therefore defies all human tyrants. 
Poland battled fiercely for two years. She might 
have battled longer had Russia been her only 
enemy, but again in this matter Prussia and Russia 
acted as one; and, while Alexander II. bore the 
odium of wholesale executions and deportations 
to Siberia, history must permit a large share to 
his partner Wilhelm I., who placed at Russia's 
disposal an admirable secret police and a frontier 
force whose business it was to hunt down such 
Poles as had taken refuge on German soil and hand 
them back to their tormentors. 

In 1864 Russia stood by benevolently whilst 



20 Prussianism and Pacifism 

Prussia consummated the rape of Denmark and 
in 1866 the work of defeating Austria at Sadowa 
was the more complete because of the knowledge 
that all Prussian troops could be safely withdrawn 
from her eastern border. In 1870 again Russia 
was a powerful factor, for she not merely main- 
tained benevolent neutrality towards her Potsdam 
partner, but was prepared to check Austria had 
she chosen to seize this opportunity for wiping 
out the disgrace of 1866. 

Thus we may note that throughout the life of 
Wilhelm I., from the day when he fled with his 
mother to the headquarters of Alexander I., on 
the Memel (i 806-1 807), down and through the 
days of Metz and Sedan, he had ever at his elbow 
a loyal and well-armed ally who step by step 
watched the progress of Prussia, kept her true to 
the teachings of autocracy, helped her to destroy 
one rival after another until from being a puny 
state of five million souls (1807) she rose within 
the lifetime of one man to the rank of a mighty 
Empire with a population of more than fifty mil- 
lions, an army the most powerful in the world, 
more than a million square miles of tropical colony, 
and a navy second only to that of Great Britain, 

Wilhelm I. never failed to manifest the gratitude 
he owed to his Muscovite brother. He, at least. 



Prussian Gratitude to Russia 21 

carried to his grave the knowledge that the glory 
of his long reign — even his crown — he owed to a 
Romanoff. On this account it was that with his 
last breath he adjured his grandson to keep the 
peace with Russia, no matter how great might 
be the provocation to war. Wilhelm II. was 
mindful of these monitions and more than once 
vehemently insisted that under no conceivable cir- 
cumstances would he ever act otherwise — but then 
this form of vehemence was made before 1896! 
What must now be the reflections of him who rudely 
brushed aside every outstretched hand in 191 4; 
who broke the pledge made at the deathbed of a 
venerated grandfather; who invaded Russia with 
a recklessness only second to the perfidy with 
which he inundated neutral Belgium; who laughed 
at treaties as mere scraps of paper; who referred 
to the British army as "contemptible" and to an 
American intervention as negligible! Wilhelm II. 
may find comfort in the thought that his agents 
have successfully propagated the doctrine of anar- 
chy in Russia; have reduced her to a state of 
economic helplessness and set back the clock of 
civilization to the days of Ivan the Terrible. 

German writers — at least those of them seeking 
favour at court — have dealt very sparingly with 
the subject of Prussian dependence on Russia. 



22 Prussianism and Pacifism 

On the contrary, since 1870, and notably since 
the accession of Wilhelm II. (1888), scarce a profes- 
sor of history but has made a bid for preferment 
by furnishing detailed and wearisome proof that 
since the Russian is of an obviously inferior Kultur 
it is the divine mission of those whose Kultur is 
higher to intervene and thus help the neighbouring 
empire by Prussification. These historic effusions 
have been of slight value in themselves, but they 
have become powerful adjuncts when utilized by 
the propaganda bureau of Berlin. Then they 
multiply into millions of leaflets — they are made 
part of every German's breakfast through the col- 
umns of an officially supervised press; the police, 
the clergy, and the department of education en- 
courage a public sentiment by means of which 
some day war upon Russia may be welcomed by 
the people as not merely the duty of a higher 
civilization towards a lower one, but as one pro- 
mising enormous material reward at a compara- 
tively small cost. For thirty years I have heard 
this matter discussed by merchants, by masters 
in ethnography, by professors of history, and — 
what is more important — by officers about the 
court. Each group discusses from its own angle 
of vision, but the determining group takes orders 
from the War Department. Public sentiment 



Makes Public Sentiment 23 

may be artificially roused and maintained over 
many years, but the soldier times his movements 
by the information secured by spies, and declares 
war when he feels sure that he has a superiority 
over any and all probable enemies. 

And now let us leave Russia and return to 
Wilhelm I. — still Crown Prince of Prussia. 



CHAPTER V 

Accession of Wilhelm I. — His Coronation — 

Parliamentary Friction — Decides to 

Abdicate 

TN 1857 Wilhelm I. at last secured his opportun- 
* ity through the mental collapse of his older 
brother (Friedrich Wilhelm IV.). This brother 
had so scandalously coquetted with partisans of 
liberalism, constitutionalism, and other isms hate- 
ful to the military aristocracy that it needed little 
more to have caused a palace revolution in favour 
of the warlike Wilhelm — a revolution that would 
have been justified in Yunker eyes on the ground 
that the monarchy could not otherwise be pre- 
served. Indeed the mental and political eclipse 
of Wilh elm's elder brother caused little chagrin 
anywhere; for while the new autocrat was dis- 
liked as a mere barrack-room graduate, the fat 
and fatuous predecessor had promised reforms 
which he had not executed and had jailed or exiled 
all those who had dared to remind him of broken 
promises. He was unsoldierly in appearance and 

24 



Wilhelm I. Becomes King 25 

temperament; discoursed volubly on symbolism 
in theology; posed as a connoisseur in art and fell 
an easy prey to courtiers who flattered adroitly. 
Meanwhile the Prussian army was neglected and 
no one chafed more on this account than the 
Crown Prince, who cared little for any art that 
went beyond the practical needs of an efficient 
army. 

The mom.ent that Wilhelm I. laid his hand on 
the rudder the ship of state sailed steadily; there 
was no more shaking in the wind for there were 
no more drowsy quartermasters. From 1857 to 
his death in 1888 Prussia moved forward on her 
journey; now tacking against head winds, now 
followed by favouring gales, sometimes without 
an observation but always under the control of a 
master whose daring was tempered by a prudence 
bom of much sad experience and a life which 
seemed patriarchically extended. 

He was sixty years old when called to the 
regency — he was sixty-four when the death of his 
brother enabled him (1861) to feel completely 
safe from interference. In that year he became 
de jure no less than de facto King of Prussia. He 
seized the crown with his own hands directly from 
the altar of God. Hitherto he had been compelled 
to drop a word now and then which recognized 



26 Prussianism and Pacifism 

the share of his people in the government of their 
country. That time was now past and Wilhelm 
der Grosse, Wilhelm der Siegreiche, came forth 
from the Schlosskirche of Konigsberg like another 
Siegfried armed by Heaven with a sword destined 
to prove redoubtable not only to the enemy be- 
yond his frontiers, but even more so to those of 
his brother Germans who subsequently questioned 
his overlordship. And this Hohenzollern entered 
upon a career of military triumphs at an age when 
in many armies men are pensioned for old age. 

We must now return to the stormy year of his 
coronation, when at the Altar of his Lutheran 
Wotan he drew the sword of absolute monarchy 
and shouted to his people that henceforth there 
was but one law — his will. He knew there was 
a Prussian Parliament and that 1848 had plagued 
his brother with a so-called constitution. He 
had no objection to popular delegates meeting 
and talking so long as they voted his military 
budget and asked no further questions. But the 
delegates of 1861 had still much of the spirit of 
1848, and political independence had not yet 
disappeared so completely as it was destined to 
under the persistent poundings of a Bismarck. 
The Prussian delegates were loyal; but, unfor- 
tunately for themselves, their loyalty was mani- 



Prusvsian Army Reorganized 27 

fested more to the constitution than to their King 
— and as the constitution is a thing made by 
human hands, and a crown comes from divine 
ones, Wilhelm I. saw his duty — and he did it. 

He consuhed no cabinet ministers or parHamen- 
tary committees, but decided ex propria motu that 
the Prussian army should be immediately reor- 
ganized, be increased in numbers, and that univer- 
sal service should be for three years. He did not 
stoop to consult those who constitutionally repre- 
sented the purse of the people; he saw no reason 
why he should prepare the public mind for a 
largely increased army, a heavier burden of per- 
sonal service, and above all a tax of unprecedented 
proportions. It seemed to him sufficient that he 
should demand the money; it was their business 
to obey the King and vote accordingly. In Eng- 
land such a king would have been arrested, tried, 
and decapitated. But in Berlin the people, in 
Parliament assembled, went no further than to 
vote a protest — and this was a degree of self- 
assertiveness wholly unknown hitherto save in 
the one momentary spasm of 1848. 

The King demanded money for his army and 
the common people dared to deny ! He demanded 
a second time; the request was again denied, nor 
was this all — the other German states were in 



2S Prussianism and Pacifism 

a ferment of liberalism that bordered ominously 
on discontent, not so say revolution. The police 
had done their dirty duty of hunting down not 
merely those who had helped the men of 1848 but 
any on whose premises had been found pamphlets 
disrespectful to the authorities. Germany in 
general and Prussia in particular bore the outward 
appearance of a complete political calm ever since 
Wilhelm had scattered the rebels (1849) in Baden. 
This period is known to Germans as the period of 
Reaction, when the outward military calm was 
more than made up by a fierce and cruel persecu- 
tion of all things politically liberal. This persecu- 
tion was conducted secretly, at night, by police 
agents and judges who knew that their promotion 
would be proportionate to the zeal they showed in 
exterminating the pestiferous champions of con- 
stitutional liberty. 

Wilhelm I., in 1862, faced a situation for which 
his purely military training had but feebly pre- 
pared him. He needed money for the army yet 
this rnoney was in a way kept from him by a con- 
stitution granted by his brother, who also was 
divine! How much of his divinity clung to this 
uncomfortable constitution? Should he attack 
these fragments in order to save the larger di- 
vinity embodied in his own majesty? Should he 



Abdication ? 29 

send to jail the impudent mob of M. P.'s — or better 
still have them shot for lese majeste ? And if he 
did so, what would be the effect outside of his 
Yunkers and the army? He had had a taste of 
one revolution— could it possibly happen again? 

Wilhelm stood alone in this crisis, and as usual, 
with men of his holy attributes, he prayed to the 
God of his family. He could not — would not — 
yield or compromise. Rather than parley with 
a vile mob of civilians, he would break his sword — 
abdicate. And so Wilhelm decided to abdicate. 
This he did at Babelsberg near Potsdam, his 
little imitation Windsor castle that is embowered 
in a park laid out on an Enghsh pattern. In this 
little oasis of rustic relaxation, contrasting agree- 
ably with the stiff pseudo-French terraces and 
alUes of Sans Souci, Wilhelm wrote out his promise 
to resign in favour of his son — later known as 
Vnser Fritz and as Emperor, Frederic the Noble — 
the son-in-law of Queen Victoria. 

What if the crown had passed in 1862 to the 
youthful husband of an English Princess! How- 
ever, such visions are for the dramatist; we are 
concerned with history. Wilhelm I. prayed for 
help and — Enter Bismark! 



CHAPTER VI 

Bismarck Becomes Chief Minister — Prussia without 
a Constitution — Military Reform in Earnest 

A X /"ILHELM I. received Bismarck as an answer 
to prayer; but whether his prayer reached 
heaven or the place whence Faust welcomed Mephis- 
topheles, is a problem whose untangling depends 
upon the political, not to say theological angle 
from which the student approaches this turning 
point in German history. In each case the result 
was profitable — for a very brief period. Bismarck 
came to Wilhelm and raised him from despair to 
a height of worldly glory rarely achieved and never 
surpassed by any monarch of modern times. But 
the price had to be paid — in 1918! 

Wilhelm was sixty-five and Bismarck forty- 
seven years of age when they met for their momen- 
tous contract in September of 1862. The robust 
and resolute diplomat was fresh from eminently 
satisfactory missions to both Petersburg and 
Paris. At the court of Alexander he cemented 

30 



Bismarck and lago 31 

even more closely the confidential relations unit- 
ing these two autocracies, and his visit to Louis 
Napoleon gave him the assurance that in any 
prospective difficulty with Denmark or Austria, 
Prussia need fear no harm from either of these 
neighbours. It was not probable in his mind 
that England would act alone — consequently his 
problem as a Prussian was comparatively simple — 
to secure such a military preponderance as would 
check, if not crush Austria, and thus raise Prussia 
to the leadership of all German states. 

Bismarck was not merely soldierly in appearance, 
but he owed much of his power and popularity 
to an lago species of blunt, even brutal, frankness. 
In his moments of most cunning and duplicity 
he could simulate such splendid bursts of per- 
secuted virtue as to draw heart-felt hosannas from 
milHons who had never seen him; and to mystify 
even seasoned parliamentarians. They knew from 
experience that his fame as an uncompromising 
monarchist was deeply tinged with an equally 
uncompromising manner of supporting his argu- 
ments with the weapons of the duelling ground. 
Bismarck had honestly earned the reputation of 
bully amongst the colleagues who had enjoyed 
the honour and misfortune of sharing the same 
conference table — though not the same views. 



32 Prussianism and Pacifism 

No one knew the tricks of the jury lawyer better 
than this Yunker. He practiced the art of weak- 
ening the opposing cause by browbeating and 
discrediting its representative; and this in so 
pubHc a manner as to drive him discomfited from 
the field. There is a famous German painting 
which may in counterfeit be seen in most German 
hamlets, representing Bismarck at the moment 
of his culminating triumph, dictating terms of 
peace after the collapse of the French Empire 
(1870-71). The iron Chancellor alone fills the 
exulting eye of his admirers. He towers in rugged 
forcefulness over a shrunken little old man whose 
natural proportions seem reduced even more by 
the vast arm-chair into which he collapses. Bis- 
marck is in full Prussian armour — the reincarna- 
tion of Thor, Wotan, Siegfried — the ancestral 
tjrpe that has displaced the blessed Saviour in 
modern Germany and substituted a polytheistic 
Walhalla where Wagnerian choirs chant of blood, 
and an iron Chancellor marks time on a noisy 
anvil. Modern Germany is fired by this majestic 
picture; for she sees there a symbol of her do- 
minion over other countries. The little crumpled- 
up enemy in the bottom of the big chair is to us 
an honoured name, that of Thiers — historian, 
statesman, patriot. To the Teuton he represents 



Bismarck Opposes Abdication 33 

merely an insignificant fragment of a vanishing 
race, a puny Frenchman whose land will soon be 
known as a German province — another Posen, 
another Sleswick, another Alsace ! 

Wilhelm was at one with Bismarck on the com- 
mon purpose of achieving the undisputed autoc- 
racy of the Hohenzollerns ; of arming the country 
for a struggle with Austria and finally for achiev- 
ing the military headship or hegemony of Prussia. 
Yet Wilhelm shuddered slightly at the prospect 
of this partnership; not because Bismarck was 
likely to prove unequal to his part of the contract, 
but rather because the venerable King dreaded 
that his prospective chancellor would hurry him 
along with too much violence; and precipitate 
quarrels before the time to fight had sounded on 
the great gong of Hohenzollern destiny. On this 
memorable September morn of the year 1862, 
Bismarck found his King alone pacing a path 
between the palace and the Havel, which here 
spreads into a pleasing lake. The King had in 
his hand the paper on which he had written out 
his abdication. He read this to Bismarck, who 
advised him to tear it up. The King commenced 
to do so and dropped the fragments into a little 
stream that runs through the estate. Bismarck, 
however, promptly picked out each little scrap. 



34 Prussianism and Pacifism 

thus furnishing immediate evidence to Wilhelm 
that this noisy negotiator could show caution 
greater even than his own. The whole situation 
was then discussed as between a patient who has 
tried all medicines in vain and a doctor whose 
treatment is known to be heroic. 

Wilhelm had high standards of honour — as 
understood by a Prussian. He was a cordial 
believer in, if not author of, the jingo jingle that 
vibrates today with undiminished meaning in 
every officer s mess : 

Gegen Demokraten 
Helfen nur Soldaten 

or in our language, there's no good democrat but 
a dead one. Wilhelm would gladly march out 
and shoot down every man, woman, or child who 
by act or innuendo reflected on his divine right, 
but how reach a parliamentary majority whose 
pestiferous behaviour was protected by the solemn 
oath of his God-fearing, ever to be remembered 
and illu.strious, resting in the bosom of Wotan, 
brother Frederick William IV. ! Even he could not, 
unaided, commit such a crime as nullifying the 
act of a divine predecessor. A Prussian officer 
could not break his word of honour, his Ehrenwort! 
But Bismarck soon made it clear to his patron, 



/ 



Break the Constitution 35 

that his word of honour would suffer no harm. 
The parHament would not vote his military bud- 
get? Very well, we'll do without parliament! 
But what about the constitution granted by the 
resting-in-God predecessor? Bismarck promised 
to look after that — the King should have no wor- 
ries from disloyal deputies — he could now give his 
undivided attention to a reform of the army — yes, 
it was perhaps a trifle irregular to abolish a con- 
stitution — but then what was a trifle like this 
compared with the ultimate benefit to his army — 
why let a scrap of paper stand between an honour- 
able King and the achievement of his glorious 
troops! And thus piety and perplexity fought 
for mastery in the soldierly bosom of Wilhelm. 
He listened as one who would gladly share in the 
result of a crime, but would be more glad if the 
odium were borne by others. It was with joy 
that the pious old King recognized at last the one 
subject who not only shared all his hatred of popu- 
lar government but also his desire to gag both 
parliament and press — more than that, Bismarck 
agreed to face the mob in and out of the forum 
and in any case to be the scapegoat if he failed. 

And thus was the compact sealed between 
master and man — a compact that was loyally held 
for more than a quarter of a century — and which 



36 Prussianism and Pacifism 

forms one of the most remarkable friendships in 
kingly chronicle. And now the curtain rolls down 
on the first act in the drama; and the man who 
wrote his abdication in 1862 closed his eyes on 
an empire where monuments to his glory were, 
in 1888, more than, the days in a year. 



CHAPTER VII 

Bismarck — His Policy and his Manners — Prussian 

Violation of Denmark and the League of 

Nations in 1864 

IV TO one fact in history can be understood save 
■'■ ^ in its relation to all other facts ; and to push 
this argument even further we might insist that 
no historic fact is less important than another. 
The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown was the 
logical outcome of a conflict between the British 
Crown and the descendants of those English who 
landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620. The surren- 
der of Lee at Appomattox (April of 1865), concludes 
a chapter commencing with the introduction of 
the African on American soil ; but it opens another 
and more serious one: what to do with the negro 
now that he is free! The violation of Belgian 
neutrality by Wilhelm II., in 1914, stands as a 
landmark in criminology, but it is inseparably 
linked with that pleasant day in September of 
1862 when the grandfather of Wilhelm II. gave 

37 



38 Prussianism and Pacifism 

one of many instances where treaties have been 
but scraps of paper — in Hohenzollern eyes. 

Bismarck now faced his Prussian ParHament 
with the comfortable secret that whichever way 
they voted or declaimed he had in Wilhelm a power 
capable of supporting him even if the streets of 
Berlin ran once more with blood. He thundered 
from the ministerial tribune on the importance 
of a stronger army; on the mission of Prussia to 
guard the interests of all Germany; on the union 
of all her little principalities under Hohenzollern 
leadership. It was on the 30th of this memorable 
month that he unmasked his parliamentary bat- 
teries and bellowed forth to an astonished world 
that: great problems of state are not solved by 
debates or by majorities but — by blood and iron ! 
He spoke this to a parliamentary majority that 
was sick of blood and iron, and that answered 
him by once more declining to pass his war budget. 
Blood and Iron has been a part of German creed 
ever since 1871, but in 1862 it was repulsive, for 
it savoured of Russian methods to a people who 
had not yet been educated out of the humanities. 
Bismarck was a forceful speaker — very direct — 
with a fund of homely similes drawn mainly from 
country life. In conversation he was illuminating 
from the variety of his travel and the notable men 



Blood and Iron 39 

whom he had met; but his chief charm lay in his 
explosions of wrath and consequent indiscretions 
which were greedily garnered and put in circula- 
tion by the Boswells of Berlin. How far the 
great Chancellor's anger was feigned it would be 
presumptuous to enquire. But he was a Prussian; 
and my experience leads me to think that he acted 
according to the instincts of his tribe in lashing 
himself into the appearance of outward rage in 
order to help intimidate such as were to face him. 
I have seen such men amongst Kaffir tribes, who 
painted their bodies to resemble demons and who 
danced ferociously and emitted savage yells be- 
fore going into battle. In my youth I noted 
amongst Prussian schoolmasters the custom of 
simulating anger in order to impress children. 
Officers cultivate a vicious guttural snarl when 
addressing their docile troops and even the railway 
servants answer the questions of travellers after 
the manner of men who do not wish to be confused 
with mere civilians. In my later years I have 
found this interesting survival of ancestral bar- 
barism illustrated by the behaviour of German 
professors and titled officials one towards the other 
when assembled for scientific or literary inter- 
course. Here also the pundit, whose conclusions 
are not shared by a colleague, adopts the tribal 



40 Prussianism and Pacifism 

manner of spitting at his academic opponent; of 
questioning his veracity and, finally, of denounc- 
ing him as a pig or camel — in short, following the 
methods usual amongst Baltic aborigines. Deal- 
ing as I am in relative concepts I can explain only 
by remarking that men of the great race do not 
act as bullies when addressing a pariiamentary 
body; they do not habitually cultivate brutal 
manners towards enlisted men; they do not seek 
to intimidate school children, much less do they 
fly into a passion when differing on cuneiform in- 
scriptions or an error in the fifth dimension. 

Bismarck, like his master — (and perhaps both 
in imitation of the Czar Nicholas) — always culti- 
vated a warlike dress no less than a barrack room 
speech. No German member of Parliament could 
ever have entertained a high opinion of his own 
importance; but whatever of dignity might have 
been his, on taking his seat, was soon dispelled 
when Bismarck in the uniform of a Pomeranian 
cuirassier reared his glittering crest before them; 
rested one hand on his cavalry sabre; raised a 
large glass of brandy and water in the other and 
knitted his brows after the manner of a judge 
about to pronounce sentence of death. And then 
followed words meant as a scourge to the mem- 
bers, who listened like sulky schoolboys. Nor did 



Bismarck's Oratory 41 

Bismarck mind their sulkiness. On the contrary, 
his talk was the better for every contradiction. 
A hostile house made him the more thirsty; and 
before the end of his harangue, and the brandy 
and water, he had risen to such a state of exalta- 
tion and pugnacity that the roomful of people's 
delegates shrank into shabby insignificance — hope- 
lessly overwhelmed by the magisterial manner 
and martial accessories of their King's chief 
minister. True, they still persisted in their obsti- 
nate clamour for the rights granted them by the 
constitution; but Bismarck soon drew away the 
attention of their constituencies to schemes far 
more interesting than parliamentary budgets. 
He first secured an edict forbidding political 
gatherings, excepting of course those in his favour. 
Then he made every newspaper an instrument of 
his policy, not merely by forbidding any criticism 
of his methods, but by organizing a press propa- 
ganda which soon educated a tame people to 
forget the heroes of national liberty and to think 
better of such as preached salvation through 
Blood and Iron. 

And thus we come to the year 1864 when Prussia 
marched an army into Denmark in a moment of 
profound peace; overran the southern and by 
far the richer half; annexed the strategic line from 



42 Prussianism and Pacifism 

Kiel on the Baltic to the North Sea, and then 
coolly turned upon an astonished and mildly 
indignant world with the complacent smile of who 
would say: "And what are you going to do about 
it!" 

England, Russia, France, Austria — all the so- 
called Great Powers of Europe had solemnly 
joined with Prussia (May 8, 1852) in signing at 
London a treaty whose prime feature was a joint 
guarantee of Danish integrity. Much the same 
sort of treaty had been signed also in London (1831) 
referring to Belgium, and each treaty was violated 
successively by Prussia when the opportune 
moment offered for a war of spoliation. 

The year 1864 was the psychological one for 
Prussia — which means that her army was fit for 
the field and the neighbouring "great Powers" 
not likely to interfere. England was indignant and 
vented her feeling violently. Indeed the audacity 
of Prussia fairly took the breath from John Bull — 
it was something wholly beyond his pacifistic 
horizon — it was illegal — it was outrageous- — ^it 
demanded immediate police interference — it could 
not be endured and much more to the same effect. 
But when the Russian Cabinet invited the British 
to make a move, Queen Victoria would not listen 
to any suggestion of war. She loved peace, par- 



Victorian Pacifism 43 

ticularly so when peace was the thing most fer- 
vently desired by Prussia, for whose King she felt a 
sympathy more than cousin german. Little did 
Victoria dream of the blood that would be shed 
by her brave subjects in consequence of this policy 
dictated by emotional pacifism. How could she, 
good mother and conscientious Queen, imagine 
that the habit of breaking treaties and violating 
the territory of weaker neighbours would become 
chronic in the land made holy to her by the love 
she bore to her German consort. England stood 
by, consenting to the spoliation of Denmark (1864) ; 
and her wise men wept at the crime; and they 
blushed at their share in it ; for whilst Continental 
Powers might find apologists in such a matter, to 
the glory of Great Britain be it said, that her 
statesmen in our time have been men of clean 
hands and truthful tongues. 

Our Civil War was then threatening to leave 
North America a divided and exhausted conglom- 
erate of disorganized communities; and Napoleon 
III. had a French army in Mexico whose osten- 
sible reason was to maintain the dignity of Maxi- 
milian but whose ultimate purpose, it was feared, 
had something to do with a campaign across the 
Rio Grande and annexation of whatever might be 
secured from the wreck of our States. 



44 Prussianism and Pacifism 

Austria had been dragged into the Danish cam- 
paign by diplomatic means highly creditable to 
the talents of the Prussian negotiators. She sent 
a force rather by way of watching what the army 
of her rival might do, than with any interest of 
her own at stake, and of course quickly discovered 
that she had been made a dupe of Bismarck who 
only used her for the sake of appearances and 
cast her aside when his object had been secured. 
Nicholas was dead, but his successor continued the 
same intimate personal relations with Wilhelm I. 
that had subsisted for now nearly a whole gen- 
eration. Alexander II. was profoundly grateful 
to Wilhelm for Prussian aid in suppressing the 
Polish rebellion and to the same extent angry 
at Napoleon III. for encouraging it; he was pre- 
pared therefore to cordially support Prussia in 
her rape of Denmark — and he did this in many 
quiet ways, for his foreign policy was guided by 
a statesman of rare vision and very smooth man- 
ners, an older than Bismarck and a less turbulent 
one — Prince Gortschakoff — who pressed heavily 
on Austria — so heavily that Franz Josef did not 
dare to make a move. In Paris he passed the 
word around that if Napoleon III. intervened he 
would have to reckon with more than one enemy. 
It was about this time that a Russian fleet made 



Czar Checks Napoleon III. 45 

its appearance in American waters, and stirred the 
Northern States to infinite enthusiasm because 
that fleet was by some mysterious means made 
to indicate the present purpose of Czar Alexander 
to ally himself with the forces of Uncle Sam in 
case of any hostile move on the part of Napoleon. 
Nothing was put on paper; and GortschakofT was 
able to shrug his shoulders and treat the matter 
as a mere coincidence; but no man knew better 
than himself the enormous moral effect of that 
fleet — not merely in Washington, but above all in 
Paris. And thus it came about through a dozen 
different causes, each of them inextricably wound 
about antecedent ones, that in 1864 the great 
"League of Nations" stood by motionless whilst 
helpless little Denmark was beaten, robbed, and 
mutilated by one of its own members. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Napoleon III. and Victor Emmanuel — Eugenie and 
the Crimean War — Cavour and Bismarck 

FT would indeed have been a bold prophet who, 
^ in the midst of our Civil War, should have 
predicted a moment within his own life when an 
American President would take a seat in the palace 
of Louis XIV., with delegates from China and 
Japan to say nothing of European states — all 
united for the purpose of doing justice to Belgium. 
In 1864 America's interest in foreign affairs was 
negative. We held as our national creed the 
opinion that no state of Europe should meddle 
with affairs of our continent, and to the same extent 
we would have declined to assist Denmark in her 
struggle against Prussia; however much we might 
have sympathy with a people of liberal constitu- 
tion defending herself against an absolute monar- 
chy. Paradoxically, however, we hotly resented 
the presence of French troops in Mexico, although 
their master Napoleon III. was at that time 

46 



Napoleon in Mexico 47 

acclaimed in more cities than Paris as the friend 
of down-trodden Poland and the liberator of Italy. 
To push the paradox further still, let us here claim 
that Italy's glorious position today as a free and 
independent great power is the work very largely 
of Wilhelm I. of Prussia and Napoleon III. of 
France. We have pointed out that the invasion 
of Denmark in 1864 was but preliminary war 
practice in order to make sure of the Prussian 
Army when the time should come (1866) for an 
attack on Austria. Italy at that moment also 
sought an occasion for attacking the enemy who 
then ruled the Venetian states, and what more 
natural than that Bismarck and Wilhelm I. should 
unite with Cavour and Victor Emmanuel in the 
double purpose of expelling the Hapsburgs from 
Germany and securing an ally in Italy. 

When we say what more natural, we speak not 
for Wilhelm, but for Bismarck. The power of 
Prussia in HohenzoUern eyes rested wholly on 
her army ; the power of Victor Emmanuel reposed 
upon the loyalty of a turbulent yet trustful and 
liberty loving people. Many Italians attacked 
Cavour for being conservative, others abused him 
for being a hotspur. It was a day of illiteracy, 
suspicion, and lawlessness in much of Italy, 
and for that reason we must marvel that out of 



48 Prussianism and Pacifism 

what seemed political chaos emerged finally the 
figure of a monarch ruling a free and united people 
from the Alps to Sicily and from Genoa to the 
Adriatic. What my grandchildren study as the 
past is to me the story of my own life, for as a 
child my ears caught the fervid shouts of welcome 
for the allied armies returning triumphant from 
Magenta and Solferino (1859); and in Paris many 
were the popular songs linking the two liberators, 
Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel. 

Cavour stands out as one of the world's great 
men because he not only achieved what Bismarck 
achieved, the unity of his country, but he achieved 
all this and much more without ever violating the 
constitution or alienating the love of his people. 
Bismarck and Cavour were both great men — the 
Prussian believed that his people could be ruled 
only by the dread of punishment ; the Piedmontese 
proved that an appeal to his people's patriotism 
and love of liberty was enough. Both men 
achieved the end they sought, Cavour through 
lawful methods, Bismarck through blood and iron. 
Must Ve conclude that each was right — that 
Cavour appealed to reason because his people are 
of a higher human type? The Iron Chancellor 
has done much to encourage this view, — and the 
great war has done more still. 



Napoleon 111. as Revolutionist 49 

Napoleon III. in his youth had rushed to the 
ranks of the Carbonari, in order to fight against 
the two autocratic powers who then oppressed 
the disunited states of Italy (1830) — Austria and 
the Pope. The revolutionary bands were hunted 
down and the youthful prince narrowly escaped 
in disguise; but ever after, he cherished a chival- 
rous desire to assist in the restoration of national 
unity amongst the states of Europe. From Italy 
he made his way to Poland where the patriots 
desired him to be their King. But before this 
coronation could take place the Russian Czar 
had put an end to Polish plans no less completely 
than had those of Italy been damped by the 
autocrat of Vienna. The story of Napoleon does 
not belong here save by way of contrast to that 
of Wilhelm. In 1848 the same revolution that 
drove Pius IX. from Rome placed Louis Napoleon 
on the steps of an imperial throne. As member 
of the Carbonari he had incurred the curse of the 
Pope; but between 1830 and 1848 he had spent 
much time in political pondering and plotting. 

He was in a desperate situation; tossed up by 
the turbulent waves of a frenzied political tide to 
a post which he owed partly to his name and partly 
to many utterances in favour of popular govern- 
ment. That a Napoleon should remain member 



50 Prussianism and Pacifism 

of a republican committee for long was incredible, 
and so he prayed for help — as Wilhelm did four- 
teen years later, and with analogous results. 
Bismarck came at the cry of Wilhelm, and when 
the excommunicated Napoleon piously pleaded 
for any rope that might lift him to a throne — it 
was reached down to him by Pius IX. This rope 
proved a noose, as all may read who are permitted 
to read other than expurgated editions. The 
Pope helped Napoleon, it is true, but Popes expect 
payment. Napoleon paid by handing over to a 
Papal priesthood the children of France and by 
sending a French army (1849) to scatter the repub- 
lican army of Mazzini — and restore a theocratic 
monarch to a temporal throne. Then followed 
the marriage with the beautiful but very shallow 
Eugenie (1853) who delighted the shopping dis- 
tricts of Paris by her extravagance; but gave still 
more joy to the Papacy by an ardent — I had al- 
most said atavistic — enthusiasm for everything 
mediaeval and priestly in France. The union of 
Napoleon with a beauty so frail and bigoted was 
for France a calamity almost equal to that of the 
bargain with Pius. She bore him but one boy, 
a delicate artificial thing resembling her in face 
no less than character. But while she could do 
little to dignify a throne or provide for posterity, 



Eugenie and her Bigotry 51 

she surrounded herself and her weak husband with 
men whose allegiance was first to the Pope and 
after that, to their country. 

No sooner was Napoleon squarely seated on his 
throne (1852) than he looked about him for the 
means of making that throne look less parvenu 
in the eyes of the scrupulous — and it was just at 
that moment that Nicholas of Russia insisted 
autocratically on his right to control the various 
places where miracles were said to have been 
performed by early Christian martyrs. The 
matter was of small consequence, seeing that the 
soil of Palestine had been systematically spaded 
for several centuries after the death of our Blessed 
Saviour, and Europe flooded with graveyard 
products alleged to be bones of saints and martyrs; 
to say nothing of timber by the ton, all certified 
as having been part of the true Cross. If the 
pious autocrat of the Greek Church found pleasure 
in supporting the cost of guarding part of the 
Sultan's territory, it would seem that Christianity 
at large owed each of them gratitude, especially 
as the religion of Mahomet had displaced Christian- 
ity in those parts for more than a thousand years. 
But Eugenie saw in this an opportunity for a 
crusade of Rome against the Russian heretic. 
Her husband saw an opportunity of humiliating 



52 Prussianism and Pacifism 

a Czar who had grudgingly recognized his right 
to the throne, and both rejoiced at the prospect 
of an alliance with the very correct Queen of Eng- 
land and the equally legitimate Victor Emmanuel 
in a war (1853- 1856) that was destined to 
humiliate the most military empire of the world; 
to give hope and courage to down-trodden Balkan 
states; and to stir profoundly the sentiment of 
Italy in favour of unity under Victor Emmanuel. 
And this brings us to the close of the Crimean War. 



CHAPTER IX 

How Cavour Created Italy 

/^^AVOUR and Bismarck resembled one another 
^^ in each being a farmer, cultivating their 
estates scientifically yet profitably; and each 
necessarily familiar with the economic needs of 
that part of the population on whose prosperity 
the safety of the state reposes with most security. 
The deplorable condition of country life in America 
may be largely traced to more than half a century 
of legislation at the hands of town-bred lawyers, 
reformers from the big cities, and agents of rail- 
ways and factories. The greatness of Cavour, like 
that of Washington, rests less upon the sum of 
their respective achievements than their courage, 
not to say audacity, in undertaking an imperial 
task with implements most provincial. Cavour 
like Bismarck worked each under a king of patriotic 
and warlike nature, but monarchs have more at 
stake than any subject; and more than once the 
plans of the prime minister nearly collapsed through 

53 



54 Prussianism and Pacifism 

a shrinking of the monarch from the consequences 
of a signature. Now that both of these statesmen 
have achieved their uncontested positions, we 
may safely say that great as was their diplomatic 
and political tasks, they were less arduous than 
in overcoming the scruples of their respective 
sovereigns at certain critical moments. 

Little Sardinia of 1848 under her gallant King 
Charles Albert bore to the mighty Hapsburg 
Empire the relative importance of Nicaragua to 
the United States. Few knew where it was — still 
fewer cared. Cavour, however, did not hesitate 
to profit by the year of revolution to declare war 
at once upon Austria and her ally, the Pope. It 
was a war for civil liberty and national unity; it 
failed on the field of battle, but national honour 
survived as it did in Belgium when her brave 
peasantry dared for a moment check the over- 
whelming invasion of 1914. The failure of Cavour 
in 1848 coupled with that of Belgium in the Great 
War leave few lessons for the strategist ; but they 
are of infinite encouragement to those in public 
life who introduce reforms, suffer political defeat, 
live for a time under a cloud of social ostracism; 
yet, by patiently pushing forward on the same 
line and overcoming the mists of prejudice and 
misunderstanding, they finally, as did Cavour, 



Italian Progress 55 

reconquer the confidence of a free people and are 
the stronger for what each has endured. Not 
the least of Cavour's triumphs was the notable 
stability of the Sardinian or Piedmontese throne 
when those of Berlin and Vienna rocked under 
revolutionary movement. When a monarch is 
one with his people the word revolution is never 
heard — people do not insurge against themselves! 
They go to the polls and elect men more to their 
liking — these make changes in the policy of the 
cabinet— the King wisely invites the co-operation 
of ministers responsible to Parliament — and thus 
for nearly a century Italy has from year to year 
improved her economical condition, strengthened 
her military position, achieved her unity, and above 
all found strength in herself to insist upon the right 
of the state to regulate the education of her child- 
ren — many years in advance of France in this last 
matter. 

In 1852 Cavour became prime minister at the 
age of forty-two, having in the four previous years 
persistently educated his people to the importance 
of keeping religious matters out of politics and 
working together loyally for civil liberty at home 
and the expulsion of Austria from Italian soil. 
^^ 1853 his opportunity once more arrived — when 
Austria arbitrarily sequestered the property of 



56 Prussianism and Pacifism 

Italians who had been suspected of rebelHous acts 
or words, Cavour boldly demanded the restitution 
of these estates, or at least evidence that they had 
been seized according to law. Victor Emmanuel 
bravely seconded his minister and every court of 
Europe was made to hear of Sardinia's audacity 
and Austria's disingenuousness. Italians were 
still smarting from their military disasters of 
1848 and 1849 (Custozza-Novara) , but they rallied 
loyally to the same King and the same political 
leader for another venture that looked equally 
hopeless. 

In 1853 the Crimean War began to loom on the 
diplomatic horizon — a joyful sunburst for Cavour. 
He lost no time in securing the assent of his King 
to a project which he dared whisper to no one else ; 
and when (1854) England turned to him for aid, 
he offered immediately an Italian corps of fifteen 
thousand. It had been proposed that these troops 
should be regarded as merely mercenaries hired 
for the war and added to the British forces without 
more importance than those hireling Germans 
who sold themselves to George III. (i 775-1 783) 
in order to earn money by crushing the American 
efforts at independence. The history of Germany 
is the history of mercenary armies from the Lanz- 
knechts of Charles V. to the Hessians who sur- 



Italians not Hirelings 57 

rendered at Saratoga and Yorktown. But Italians 
are not German ; and Cavour proudly threw back 
the insulting proposal emanating from a singu- 
larly ill-advised and very Germanized court, sub- 
stituting one of his own, that the Piedmontese 
army should fight side by side with British and 
French, as allies of a sovereign state, not as hire- 
lings. 

Napoleon III. immediately supported the view 
of Cavour and England yielded, little dreaming 
how far reaching would prove the effect of this 
very small and ostensibly very barren, not to say 
comical, alliance of little Sardinia with her two 
overshadowing partners. 

And barren indeed seemed the fruits of this 
bloody and costly campaign to the little state 
under the Alps. So barren were the fruits and 
so bloody the war that a Wilhelm would have had 
to fly in disguise to the shelter of an alien flag. 
But not so Victor Emmanuel and Cavour. The 
Crimean War added nothing to Italian territory; 
not even could she compel Austria to do justice 
in regard to the estates she had arbitrarily seized. 
But the moral triumph was superb when at the 
conference of the Great Powers in Paris (1856) 
the representative of this little overlooked Pied- 
mont sat as an equal; and, there, in the face of 



58 Prussianism and Pacifism 

all Europe boldly brought forward the cause of 
oppressed nationalities and demanded that Italy 
be considered. 

Here at last was heard for the first time in many 
centuries a challenge flung forth in the name of 
humanity by one helpless man speaking for one 
helpless people — but that one man was a Cavour; 
and his King from that moment became not merely 
the champion of little Piedmont but the heaven- 
sent saviour of a new and reunited country whose 
purified capital was to be a depapalized Rome. 



CHAPTER X 

More about Cavour and Napoleon III. and how 
Wilhelm Profited by the Blindness of France 

^X rlLHELM'S increasing power was aided so 
remarkably by the paradoxical policy of 
France in his time that we must again call atten- 
tion to Napoleon III, as an element in the creation 
of United and Irresistible Germany. The Napo- 
leon of 1858 was ostensibly the strongest military 
monarch on the Continent. He stood for Imperial- 
ism nominally based upon universal franchise. 
He had sent his troops to Italy (1849) in order to 
suppress the republic of Rome and had on its 
ruins restored the hated autocracy of Pius IX. 
Yet, the same year that Wilhelm of Prussia be- 
came Regent (1858), and inaugurated compre- 
hensive army reforms, the French Emperor called 
Cavour to him and together they conspired for 
thirty-six hours in secret on a war very agreeable 
to Prussia, humiliating to Austria, and never 
pardoned by the Pope. Official propaganda has 

59 



6o Prussianism and Pacifism 

falsified history so much in Hohenzollem interest 
that we cannot often enough emphasize the almost 
incredible blindness of the French Emperor who 
was incapable of penetrating the peaceful profes- 
sions of Prussia and who felt so secure on his Rhine 
frontier that he persistently wasted his military 
power in far-away wars and woke up finally (1870) 
to find Wilhelm at his throat and — no weapon at 
hand, Cavour came to Napoleon when he was 
undergoing a cure in the Alsatian mountains and 
easily persuaded him to march an army into Pied- 
mont in the spring of 1859, expel the Austrians, 
and be hailed as the liberator of Italy; just as, 
in 1857, he had set free Rumania and, earlier 
(1830) had offered his sword to insurgent Poland. 
In the same breath, however, that he conspired 
to strip autocratic Austria of her Italian provinces, 
he (or should we say Eugenie?) strictly insisted 
that the Papal autocracy should not be disturbed 
at Rome: Cavour knew his Italy well — Napoleon 
knew it only as he knew Bismarck — superficially. 
And therefore the minister of Victor Emmanuel 
promised everything, knowing that his country's 
prime need was the mere expulsion of the alien 
Austrian. After that, events would shape them- 
selves quite independently of popes or emperors. 
Napoleon desired no reward for his quixotic 



The Curtsey to Eugenie 6i 

labours, but for the sake of political prestige at 
home thought it well that Cavour should cede 
him a bit of territory — say Nice and Savoy — which 
was of course done. And then to cement the good 
fellowship, Victor Emmanuel ceded his royal daugh- 
ter to wed the French Emperor's cousin. This 
was indeed Napoleon's first triumph on other fields 
than politics and war. To him it meant what the 
alliance with an Austrian archduchess had meant 
to his uncle — a patent of legitimacy. Of course 
it was a hard fate for the Savoy Princess to marry 
into a court whose throne was occupied by a bas- 
tard adventurer and a woman of no princely pres- 
tige. Amongst the sacrifices of Italian patriots 
on the altar of their country's greatness, history 
does honour to the names of Victor Emmanuel, 
Cavour, Garibaldi and Mazzini, but surely every 
woman will remember also the supreme sacrifice 
of Princess Clotilde curtseying to the ground 
before a social inferior whom the whirligig of a 
Paris revolution had tossed into an Imperial bed. 
Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel returned each 
in triumph to his respective capital — the French 
Emperor enriched by military glory, and an addi- 
tion not merely to the territory of France but to 
the social prestige of his court; Victor Emmanuel 
returned from Magenta and Solferino sharing the 



62 Prussianism and Pacifism 

profound disappointment of Cavour at having 
achieved but an imperfect peace ; for the Venetian 
territory remained in Hapsburg hands and the 
Roman states in bondage. Time, however, worked 
after armies had apparently demobilized; and 
never did she gallop more furiously than in the 
few months remaining to Cavour. He was destined 
to pass away in June of 1861, cut off when only 
sixty years of age; but as though to sweeten the 
last moments of his remarkable life, God crowded 
into Italian history a series of popular triumphs 
unparalleled even by the Germany of 1 866-1 870. 
Garibaldi was encouraged (i860) in the famous 
expedition that wrested Sicily from the Bourbons 
and in a short time caused all of Southern Italy 
to proclaim its independence and its desire to join 
the free federation headed by Victor Emmanuel. 
The example of Naples fired all the rest of Italy; 
and, in 1861, a National Congresss proclaimed 
liberty to all Italians; hailed Victor Emmanuel 
as their King, and designated Rome as the only 
possible capital of this great and free union. Some 
portion of this proclamation was deferred until 
1866, some until 1870, and some is waiting fulfil- 
ment as these lines are being penned (1919), but on 
June 5, 1 861, Cavour, with his last breath, uttered 
words of confidence in the future of his conntry. 



Death of Cavour 63 

He died in the arms of a loving nation. Strong 
men wept as for their father and of those who 
gazed upon his coffin none saw through a heavier 
mist of tears than his loyal and courageous King. 

We of America were in a distracting war of our 
own, between the firing on Fort Sumter and the 
first battle of Bull Run. We were in a fight for 
union, but knew as little of Italy then as we do 
now of patriotic movements in China. 

Of Garibaldi we had but a hazy idea that he 
wore a semi-cowboy dress and made trouble 
whenever the opportunity offered. England at 
that time gave no encouragement to the struggling 
states whom Cavour was uniting — indeed much of 
the Victorian Court rather resented any popular 
disturbance although in a platonic way favourable 
to constitutional liberty. The more credit then 
to the immortal Cavour and the more glory to the 
first King of United Italy, the courageous Victor 
Emmanuel. 



CHAPTER XI 

How Bismarck Humbugged Napoleon before 1866 

and how Italy Profited — The Sceptre Passes 

from France to Prussia 

IV TOT long before his death Cavour penned 
■'• ^ these lines to the talented Comtesse de 
Circourt, whose drawing-room was then famous 
for wit and beauty. We may regard his words as 
a summary of his life work no less than a key to 
the success that has followed in the wake of Italy's 
liberal policy, when contrasted with that of "blood 
and iron" so frequently and noisily proclaimed in 
Potsdam during the same period. 

It is my belief [wrote Cavour] that with a parlia- 
mentary majority one can do many things unattain- 
able in a mere autocracy. Thirteen years of this 
work has convinced me that an honest and energetic 
ministry has much to gain from parliamentary opposi- 
tion provided that its hands are clean and that it 
does not allow itself to be frightened by the extremists 
of either party. Never have I felt my weakness more 
than when parliament was not sitting. Besides, how 

64 



Excommunication 65 

could I be false to my antecedents and cast aside the 
principles of a lifetime? I am the child of Liberty 
and it is to her that I owe all that I am. 

Little wonder then that the King, who tolerated 
such a torch bearer, should have been excommuni- 
cated, that even the parish priest who attended 
Cavour on his death-bed should have been pun- 
ished; and, indeed, every Italian treated as a bad 
Catholic if he preferred the flag of his country to 
that of the Pope. 

We have had little to say of Mazzini, Garibaldi, 
and other champions of liberty in Italy because 
we do not wish to lose ourselves in digression; 
and, moreover, much as we honour those men for 
their courage and the purity of their motives, we 
cannot escape the conclusion that had either of 
them been in control, their country would yet 
be a conglomerate of discordant principalities. 
We have but to imagine John Brown of Ossawa- 
tomie in the chair of Abraham Lincoln to picture 
the course of Italian history under the rule of such 
undisciplined visionaries as the gallant Garibaldi 
and the wholly impracticable Mazzini. 

Wilhelm had no sooner taken breath after his 
raid into Denmark (1864) than Bismarck placed 
himself in friendly and very confidential relations 
with the secret societies of Italy, promising them 



66 Prussianism and Pacifism 

that if they would attack Austria in the spring 
of 1866, he would help them from north of the 
Alps. With equal zeal he stirred the Hungarians 
to insurrection and would no doubt have also 
incited the Austrian Poles to rise did he not fear 
a fire that might attack his own barns. 

With consummate adroitness he again paid his 
court to Napoleon and played the part of a stupidly 
frank but very entertaining clown. The Empress 
enjoyed his daring stories and when he was gone 
said: Cest un drole de corps ! 

"He's a madman," was the sententious conclu- 
sion of her husband. And so this crafty clown 
made the acquaintance of all that was worth 
knowing about the persons who made up the 
France of that day and, in many confidential chats 
over good cigars, Napoleon HI. was completely 
humbugged into the belief that for his mere neu- 
trality in a possible war, Prussia would reward 
him by an equal complaisance should France wish 
to annex Belgium or extend her frontiers to the 
Rhine. Bismarck could afford to be generous 
with property to which he had no title; and had 
Napoleon insisted, he would gladly have promised 
him any other country on the same terms. He 
was now sure of Russia and France, so that he 
need not protect himself on those frontiers; and 



The Clown Bismarck 67 

isolated Austria was weakened still further by 
having to place an army on the Italian border 
and suppress probable outbreaks in the land of 
Kossuth. 

Bismarck was destined to live more than thirty 
years after the triumphs of 1866, but in all the 
length of his remarkable career never did his genius 
for bluffing and cajoling, combining, isolating, and 
forecasting burst forth more brilliantly than in the 
campaigns that link themselves logically together 
(i 864-1 866) and which ended in the complete 
rout of Austria, the humiliation of Napoleon III., 
and the restoration of Venice to Italy. 

Poor Napoleon rubbed his eyes when he woke 
to the state of things as they were in reality rather 
than through the smoke of Bismarckian cigars 
lighted by the tapers of Biarritz and Fontaine- 
bleau. The good-natured clown of yesterday had 
in a few days remade the map of Europe, expelled 
Austria from the German Federation, and flouted 
Napoleon's claim to hold the balance of power. 
In vain did he call upon Wilhelm's minister to 
redeem some of those ros}- promises gaily made a 
few months ago. Bismarck had forgotten all 
about them and when in anger the poor French 
Emperor talked of war, Bismarck smiled as 
though he had been offered another cigar. Alas! 



68 Prussianism and Pacifism 

poor Napoleon — not enough that he was even 
then tormented by the disease that was soon to 
end his life — he had to smart under Prussian 
insolence at a time when he was evacuating 
Mexico under pressure from the now triumphant 
government of Washington. Eugenie was indig- 
nant that Lutherans had been permitted to humble 
the Pope's most apostolic of allies and all the 
world wondered why France, that had made a 
nation of Italy at Solferino, should permit Prussia 
to reap the glories of Sadowa. And here again 
we pick up one of those many threads that were 
spun when the French usurper sold himself to the 
Papacy. He entered Piedmont in 1859 as the 
liberator of the people, and for this Italy cheered 
him. But when this people declared Rome Italian 
and her territory national, then Napoleon sent 
his troops to enslave that same people and thus 
the flag of France became hated as the symbol of 
Papal tyranny and national impotence. Napo- 
leon had been invited to join with Prussia and 
Italy in 1866; and had he been half awake he 
would have leaped at the opportunity of reaping 
military glory at a cost so small and at a time 
when his prestige sadly needed assistance. But 
again the bigotry of Eugenie and his compact with 
the Papacy made him demand so many favours 



Sadowa 69 

for Pius the IX., that the fortunate moment 
passed; and instead of Napoleon III. being the 
Sphinx of Europe, that role henceforth fell to a 
Hohenzollern who spoke very rarely but moved 
with astonishing swiftness, especially when accom- 
panied by a million or so of spiked helmets. 



CHAPTER XII 

The War of 1866 with Several Comments on Popes 
and Emperors 

nPHE contempt which Wilhelm entertained for 
-*• Parliaments and similar playthings was 
always felt and never more freely expressed than 
when in the spring of 1866 Bismarck assured him 
that the time had come to apply the good old 
Prussian maxim about blood and iron. Moltke 
as Chief of Staff and Roon as war minister assured 
their monarch that his army was more than a 
match for the sum of all the armies likely to oppose 
him; and so, after a decent period for prayer and 
pious resistance, Bismarck prevailed once more 
and the glorious campaign of 1866 rapidly unfolded 
itself before the eyes of an astonished world. 

It was in essence a German civil war — a power- 
ful Prussia setting forth to bully the weaker states 
of a federation in which she and Austria were 
competing for leadership. Bismarck took each 
state successively by the throat and threatened 

70 



Prussianizing Germany 7i 

murder if she refused to join him against Austria. 
But most of the Httle states detested the swagger- 
ing manner of their northern neighbour and refused 
to be Prussianized. They readily joined their 
forces to those of Austria; for, the Hapsburg, while 
unprogressive and lacking in military precision, 
yet had been on the whole a good-humoured neigh- 
bour and had far better manners than the Hohen- 
zollern. Wilhelm, in 1866, had, therefore, to make 
war not upon Austria alone but also on Bavaria, 
Wurtemberg, Baden, Nassau, Hessen, Saxony, 
and Hanover. It was, from the standpoint of a 
liberal, the war of a well-prepared barbarian against 
a complex of civiUzed communities amongst whom 
war was a secondary occupation. The two field 
armies were in numbers not far apart — about 
four hundred thousand on each side. But the 
Prussian army was a body of efficiently drilled 
and officered professionals to whom the many- 
headed and loosely commanded troops of Southern 
Germany counted as barely better than excellent 
militia. We can hardly recall the names of any 
who commanded on the southern side, while those 
of Wilhelm, Roon, Bismarck, and Moltke grow 
each day greater in military history. Such a 
combination was perhaps never before — let us 
praise God that nothing comparable existed in 



72 Prussianism and Pacifism 

1 91 4! South German states were weak in 1866, 
just as England and America were weak in 1914. 
They had fatuously concluded that no civilized 
country would invade them, least of all one of 
their own language. They believed themselves in 
safety behind the paper bulwarks of what some 
pacifistic folk called a "league of nations" and they 
quickly learned the lesson taught by all such Walls 
of China, that pacifism is a creed by which can 
profit only the crafty military autocrat. 

Wilhelm gave his drowsy neighbours no time 
to think, much less unite their scattered armies. 
Early in June he picked a quarrel with Austria; 
on the 15th of that same month war was formally 
declared; and in little more than a fortnight 
Saxony and Bohemia were flooded and the Austrian 
army routed in one pitched battle, known to the 
civilized world as Sadowa, but to those who of two 
sounds clutch eagerly at a harsh one, known as 
Die Schlacht bei Koeniggraetz. The great feat had 
been performed — the patient parade-ground labour 
of the past eight years had been crowned with 
success; all of the South German states felt the 
fall of Austria and capitulated one after the other, 
and Wilhelm rode home in triumph through the 
Linden Avenue of his capital at the head of an 
army that not merely gave him power to meet 



Wilhelm after Sadowa 73 

any foreign enemy but, what was to him of greater 
importance, protected him against his own beloved 
people. Sadowa rang through the world like a 
challenge from Berlin. The conqueror of Magenta 
and Solferino looked with less pleasure on the 
laurels he had plucked in Piedmont, for Prussia 
at Sadowa not merely reduced Austria to secon- 
dary importance but earned the gratitude of Italy 
by helping her to the Venetian provinces. 

Is it a wonder that Berlin went wild with joy 
and all Prussia swaggered violently! The patri- 
otic and very unselfish deputies, who had for the 
past four years carried on a hard parliamentary 
fight for constitutional liberty, were now hooted 
down by the mob who always shout for a success- 
ful Caesar. Parliament immediately condoned aU 
the crimes of those who returned with the spoils 
of war. Wilhelm and Bismarck received praise 
and forgiveness, the papers and politicians who 
one month ago charged them with breaking treaties 
and wrecking the temple of Liberty now swimg 
incense before them as the Saviours of the Father- 
land, the authors of National Unity. 

Is it ever profitable to speculate on events as 
they might have been? When today Wilhelm II. 
contemplates the wreck of an empire reared by 
the long labour of his grandfather is it possible 



74 Prussianism and Pacifism 

that he loses faith in mere force as an instrument 
of statecraft? Was Germany ripe for constitu- 
tional monarchy in 1866? Was she ripe for liberty 
in 1848? In those days there was turbulence in 
the forum; but out of that political hurly-burly 
there emerged some popular and commanding 
figures, who, little by little, were educating the 
people in self-control and constitutional methods. 
Had there been no Bismarck and no Moltke we 
might have heard more of parliamentary develop- 
ment. But popular tribunes under Wilhelm were 
either shot, jailed, or driven beyond the seas. We 
mention with respect such names as Robert Blum, 
Virchow, Lasker, Bunsen, Bamberger, Schurz — 
names anathema to Yunkers and sadly lacking 
in the Bolsheviki carnival that now passes for 
democratic government in Berlin.' Those who 
worship power only, have always apologized for 
tyranny by asserting that the victims of such rule 
were not fit for liberty. Napoleon I. and Napoleon 
III. each popularized the plausible dictum that 
France was not fit to govern herself, and little did 
Wilhelm think, in 1870, when Napoleonism sank 
in mud and blood, that it was from a self-governing 
France that his autocratic grandson was to receive 
a blow heavier than Sedan — or Sadowa! What 
if Mazzini had been assisted by Napoleon when 



Prussian Terms to Austria 75 

Rome proclaimed the republic and Pope Pius ran 
away! How glorious would France have been if 
instead of handing her children over to Jesuits for 
education she had inaugurated national and ra- 
tional education in 1848? And how happened it 
that with all Napoleon's concessions to the Vatican 
he did not compel Pius IX. to come and consecrate 
his marriage with Eugenie ! 

Alas for France, there was little of Carolus 
Quintus in the third Napoleon and even less of 
Napoleon the Great. But Wilhelm and Bismarck 
were there, two stubborn facts that never hap- 
pened before. They made three wars in their 
time and they made inevitable the war of Wilhelm 
II. Had this combination not existed Germany 
might have moved more slowly to her powerful 
position; but we are inclined to think that she 
would have today more friends and more happiness. 

In 1866 Bismarck showed an apparent gener- 
osity towards the conquered that gained him 
enormous praise in the newspaper world. He 
asked of Austria and her South German allies very 
little compared with what he had wrested from 
Denmark and was soon to take from France. In- 
deed he insisted only upon the obvious and mini- 
mum — that Austria should confine herself to the 
Danube and let the rest of the German states 



76 Prussianism and Pacifism 

group themselves economically and diplomatically 
under Prussian leadership — that was all! In 
return he offered his victims pecuniary compensa- 
tion and trade privileges that were bound up in 
a Customs Union from which each participant 
would soon draw substantial benefit. Of the four 
kings who had joined the Austrian Emperor, 
Wilhelm allowed Bavaria and Wurtemberg to 
remain intact but he deposed the Hanoverian and 
confiscated his hereditary possessions. He also 
absorbed much land in that neighbourhood which 
made Prussia now a well-rounded state — not yet 
complete, but so near to it, that Bismarck could 
arrange for the next war — which was timed for 
the moment when the German military prepara- 
tions should be adequate and France isolated. 



CHAPTER XIII 

As to the German Soldier's Docility and Servility — 
Wilhelm I. and Three Years' Military Period 

\^7HEN Wilhelm I. left Berlin, in July of 1870, 
' ' to make war against Napoleon, he was 
followed by the cheers and blessings of the same 
people who four years before criticized, if they did 
not curse him, for a tyrant and perjurer. The 
battle of Sadowa, and particularly the political 
consequences which Bismarck had exploited to 
the full, had stirred throughout North Germany 
new passions born of popular confidence in the 
statecraft of their chancellor and the military 
genius of their war department. Few people have 
been proof against the fascinations of a successful 
soldier; France succumbed for a time to her great 
Napoleon and even Napoleon III. owed much of 
his domestic power to the glory associated with 
Inkerman and Balaklava. Uncle Sam professes 
hoiTor of war, yet for over half a century our poli- 
ticians have sought presidential candidates from 

77 



78 Prussianism and Pacifism 

amongst those who gained fame on the field of 
battle, however helpless they proved themselves 
to be in the entanglements of party lines. It is 
enough to name McClellan, Grant, Fremont, and 
Hancock — notable soldiers who fell before politi- 
cal temptation. Of latter names, McKinley and 
Roosevelt, who were primarily politicians, exploited 
to the full such military record as they had, or 
believed that they had. 

If now nations of such character as France and 
the United States have yielded to this pardonable 
weakness for men of warlike fame, and if even 
Great Britain has shared our honourable failing, 
what can we expect of Prussians who for centuries 
have known no law but that of force and who have 
never possessed power save as an instrument to 
wield like the hammer of Thor against the nearest 
opponent. Children in a foreign land learn much 
that escapes their elders; and while Prussia was 
invading Denmark I was learning much by fre- 
quent single combats on the Rhine — myself being 
there at school and sharing a then inexplicable 
yearning to resent anything that looked German. 
We youngsters were wiser than our years for we 
discovered what our elders had not the means of 
discovering, that the Prussian is distinguished 
from those of the Great Race by an abnormal defi- 



Prussian Character 79 

ciency of what the Roman terms Virtus and the 
modem recognizes as character. We could never 
conceive fair play as part of a Prussian schoolboy. 
In 1866 the Austrian prisoners came streaming 
through Bonn on their way to different camps; 
there were Slovaks and Tschecks and Poles and 
Hungarians — many of those who had fought for 
liberty under Kossuth and who regarded Prussia 
only as one more tyranny on the Russian plan. 
One day I was with a dozen of my school-fellows 
— American and English — and we carried the Stars 
and Stripes to the railway station where a train- 
load of prisoners had halted. I recall as yesterday, 
the glow of happiness that lighted up those faces 
when we consented to each of them cutting a piece 
from our American flag and pinning it somewhere 
on their tunics. It was all done hurriedly, and 
that it was done at all was owing to our physical 
insignificance in the eyes of the Prussian function- 
aries. That flag disappeared in minute fragments 
and an incredibly few seconds, and in the midst 
of the depressing black and white of Prussia there 
went out of that station, amidst thunderous hur- 
rahs, understood only by us of the initiate, a car- 
load of mysteriously excited and smiling polyglots 
bedecked with red, white, and blue emblems. Those 
Austrian prisoners represented a superior race — 



8o Prussianism and Pacifism 

more character. The Prussian has nothing to 
offer which the man of Prague, of Budapest, of 
Warsaw, of Vienna cares to copy. On the other 
hand the Prussian eagerly travels and enquires 
and returns and wonders why it is that with such 
a magnificent army and such admirable municipal 
regulations the individual Prussian remains today 
just as unlovely and just as much of an erudite 
bore as Voltaire depicts him in Pangloss. 

And this brings us to the causes that within one 
decade made a mighty empire out of a second-rate 
state and sent forth into the world a host of bluster- 
ing and swaggering Prussians whose conversation 
was loud and much interlarded with such words 
as Wir Deutsche. Those who knew the Prussian 
from within had no fear of the result — even in 
191 4 — for they knew that a river cannot rise higher 
than its source nor can a nation achieve perma- 
nently a greatness that bears not some relation to 
the virtus of her citizens. The Prussian being 
devoid of individual character we must look for 
the greatness of the German Empire elsewhere, 
and we find it in the marvellous docility, not to 
say servility, of Prussianized Germany. This 
explains why Prussians of themselves have done 
little that history cares to record, whether in sci- 
ence, art, invention, or even war. It explains 



Physical Courage 8i 

better, however, the fabulous achievements of 
this people when their docility and thrift have 
been exploited by a Wilhelm and a Bismarck, a 
Moltke and a Roon, It has been frequently noted 
that physical courage is largely a matter of disci- 
pline and daily contact with danger. Chinese 
Gordon created an invincible army out of material 
which normally symbolizes pacifism. In Egypt 
British officers have made good fighting regiments 
out of men who not long before cringed at the 
sight of an official. Our own negroes have but 
the pedigree of an African slave market yet under 
officers from West Point they have added to the 
military glory of America whilst opening a new 
vista for their race. 

The French and Anglo-Americans fight none the 
less well for knowing what they are fighting about; 
nor do their officers find it necessary to strike their 
men in the face or call them by offensive names. 
In Germany all this is otherwise, and officers have 
assured me, over and over again, that the true 
greatness of Prussia reposed upon a military 
discipline so thorough that the soldier could not 
possibly do other than obey the word of command 
— without a murmur — without even a thought. 

Before Wilhelm I. came to power the Prussian 
recruits were drilled consecutively for two years, 



82 Prussianism and Pacifism 

which was deemed long enough for practical pur- 
poses and which would seem to you or me exces- 
sive. But Wilhelm thought that three years 
would be better still — that it would more effec- 
tually drill' out any latent sparks of individual 
thinking that might have been brought from home 
to the barracks. It was this little matter that 
caused all of liberal Germany to oppose their 
King in Parliament, and in this matter the King 
triumphed by throwing his sword into the balance. 
And the King was right from one point of view, 
for he commanded an army which had, in three 
years of drill, become so automatically brave that 
they attacked with equal violence Danes in 1864, 
brother Germans in 1866, and Frenchmen in 1870. 
Nor is there evidence that they fought at Saar- 
brucken or Worth any better or worse than they 
did at Langensalza or at the storming of Diippel. 
They were drilled to fight and they were drilled 
so long and so brutally that fighting any enemy 
seemed preferable to the daily petty miseries inci- 
dent to the home barracks. Thus a race of in- 
offensive, thrifty, and possibly molluscous habits, 
becomes in a short period an organized terror and 
the main support of a mad autocracy. 

Let us for a moment consider Prussia's most 
famous strategist — Moltke, the Dane. 



CHAPTER XIV 

Moltke the Dane and his Conception of War — Also 
the Great General Staff 

T T /"ILHELM I. could have done nothing with- 
' ' out a Bismarck; who in his turn would 
have been helpless but for Moltke and Roon. 
It was Wilhelm who recognized the merits of these 
three incomparable servants; he fastened them 
to him by bonds that were dissolved only in the 
hour of death. All three were of the aristocracy, 
all three owed their advancement to courtly in- 
fluence, all three were creatures of favouritism, 
all three were champions of Hohenzollern auto- 
cracy, all three were successful, all three are to- 
day venerated as patriots. 

Moltke lives in history as a military strategist 
pure and simple; who played battles as others 
play chess. He could not have been the Moltke 
of Sadowa and Sedan had he not been born at the 
right moment and, in the ripeness of his powers, 
had at his command resources that were unattain- 

83 



84 Prussianism and Pacifism 

able by a Caesar or Napoleon. As Prussia was 
the first great military autocracy of our times, so 
was she the first to treat a Moltke as a necessary, 
if not the most important, feature of her govern- 
ment. Napoleon and Caesar had strategy at their 
finger ends; so had they the position of every 
regiment or legion on the day of battle; and they 
each knew the art of stimulating soldierly courage 
by a timely phrase or dramatic movement. All 
this was possible in battles where the commander 
could see from one wing to the other and where 
the soldiers could feel that they were observed by 
a beloved chief. In the navy, matters were 
roughly analogous, the admiral was all things 
afloat, for, every ship could read his signals, 
and a Nelson embodied all that a great sailor then 
needed of gunnery, seamanship, and naval strategy. 
Wilhelm I. was the first who recognized the influ- 
ence of modem resources upon war and at the 
right moment divided his labours into three parts. 
Roon had charge of all details affecting the re- 
cruiting, equipping, drilling of the army — as minis- 
ter of war. The King as nominal war lord selected 
those who took charge of the different units in 
the field and led them to battle; but the brain of 
the whole machine was Moltke, who at his leisure 
elaborated the architectural drawings for the 



Moltke 85 

mighty war temple. It was in times of peace and 
with a staff of admirably equipped experts that 
the great strategist proved beyond a human doubt 
that he could destroy the French army in a few 
weeks. Napoleon or Caesar might have accom- 
plished the same in their day, for they were men 
of genius. But even they suffered some sad checks. 
Moltke did not pretend to be a genius. He had 
the contempt of a scientifically trained man for 
theatrical effects and soldier heroes. To him war 
was a business matter in which the winner is he 
who eliminates the most chances. He entered 
the war against France as an engineer would un- 
dertake a monster bridge or tower. He had on his 
chessboard an army, each unit of which was drilled 
mathematically to the same standard as every 
other one. He wanted no "crack" regiments and 
above all, he wanted no "charge of the Light 
Brigade." He secured just what he wanted and 
what neither Napoleon nor Caesar could have 
secured in their - day — an army in which every 
man could march at a standard rate, carry a 
standard pack, and drop into the firing line with a 
standard amount of ammunition and muscular 
power. Moltke first applied to war what our 
great captains of industry have found to be a 
prime condition of success in manufacture — he 



86 Prussianism and Pacifism 

worked for a standard — a gooo average standard. 
He was not interested to know that one regiment 
had some notable athletes or a squadron had 
famous cross-country riders. These might make 
pictures for illustrated weeklies and fill the note- 
books of war correspondents who find comfort in 
the Rough Riders of a Roosevelt; but he frowned 
on such child's play. 

Moltke was sixty-six years of age when the 
world suddenly discovered that the art of war had 
been revolutionized since Waterloo, and that 
Sadowa was the work of a new school. And in- 
deed herein lies another claim of Moltke to great- 
ness — he effaced himself, but gave every aid to 
his pupils in the General Staff. When Bismarck 
laid down his pen on the chancellor's table in the 
Wilhelmstrasse, there was no one to take it up; 
for Bismarck feared a rival and did not educate 
any possible successors. Moltke on the contrary 
created a school ; and when he died full of honours 
and years, he was the happier for knowing that 
whilst he was nothing, the General Staff was 
everything. This word of General Staff I use 
with reluctance for we have stolen it from Berlin 
and made it a burlesque of what Moltke intended. 
However there is no other word — and we must 
speak of the General Staff as we speak of Chris- 



General Staff 87 

tianity — with mental reservation regarding the 
much of poHtical mischief that may exist behind 
the curtains of each great and respectable institu- 
tion. 

The basis of Moltke's creation is knowledge; 
and the knowledge Moltke sought first was geo- 
graphic. Consequently when his King had set 
him the task of invading an hypothetical neigh- 
bour it was the first duty of the General Staff to 
purchase, purloin, or secretly make, detailed maps 
of the territory in question. In the case of France 
these could be purchased or purloined by means of 
bribery save in the neighbourhood of fortresses. 
Napoleon had to make his own maps for the larger 
part of Europe and Cassar had none in our sense. 
In our Civil War topography bore no closer rela- 
tion to physical geography than the charts of 
Ptolemy to those of the British Admiralty. When 
Moltke was born (1800) there was no scientific 
map of Prussia, but before the Franco-Prussian 
War he had made his General Staff maps a model 
for the rest of the world. Moltke, like Roon, was 
primarily a map maker and specifically a military 
geographer. He published the first correct map 
of the Dardanelles country during his life in Tur- 
key (1835- 1 839), and later gave to the world her 
first topographical map of the then country about 



88 Prussianism and Pacifism 

Rome (1845). Had Moltke and Roon sought 
work in London, instead of Berlin, the year 1870 
might have discovered them at the head of a flour- 
ishing atlas, each an F.R.G.S. and possibly geo- 
graphers to the Queen under the firm name of Roon, 
Moltke & Co. Limited. But Moltke was not 
merely the right man; his King put him in the 
right place and both happened in the right time. 
The Prussia of Moltke's youth had few if any 
good roads, and Wilhelm I. seconded his General 
Staff in this important military matter. It is 
not always that an autocrat unconsciously serves 
the higher interest of his people by carrying out 
plans formed primarily for war; but in the first 
half of the nineteenth century it may be said that 
the economic growth of Prussia was owing largely, 
if not wholly, to the labours of a King whose only 
standard of value was military efficiency. The 
correct and very detailed maps of the General 
Staff were not merely necessary for the instruction 
of officers at the autumn manoeuvres but they 
were an immense stimulus to commerce and travel. 
Moltke strategy eliminated chance and therefore 
broad hard highways had to communicate from 
all centres to the frontier; otherwise he could not 
calculate to the hour when a battery of artillery 
starting from Spandau would reach Coblenz. 



Good Roads §9 

Grant and Sherman were sometimes glad if their 
guns did not disappear in the Virginia quagmires, 
let alone move on good macadamized roads. 
Good roads helped the farmer no less than the 
soldier; and when the telegraph and railways made 
their appearance these were promptly added to 
the Prussian war equipment; and, by their aid, 
Moltke was able to make military combinations 
undreamed of by any of his predecessors and un- 
surpassed until this Great War. Moltke did not 
invent anything, but at a moment when France 
and England and Austria were bUnd to the powers 
of science in warfare, Moltke harnessed these in 
masterly manner to the chariot of Mars and easily 
placed his country in the lead of all the world, 
for at least a whole generation. 

The Prussian railways have been run as a part 
of the army. They boast little of extra fast limited 
Chicago flyers; they move with remarkable regu- 
larity and a monotonous absence of those crashes 
that cost America more lives than many a small 
war. The Prussian railway enabled Moltke to 
treat with almost mathematical accuracy an ele- 
ment in warfare which nearly every other nation 
misunderstood or ignored. I mean mobilization. 



CHAPTER XV 

Mobilization — Moltke and Prussian Preparedness 
in 1870 

/\ yi OBILIZATION means no more to our law- 
^ " * makers than trans-substantiation to a Zulu. 
But to our nimble-witted Hebrews and contractors 
it means opportunity to press money from a dis- 
tressed government — an orgy of extravagance, 
waste, and jobbery. My own life covers a period 
which includes the great Civil War, when we had 
to improvise an army of a million men on one side 
alone and when all suffered heavily save the so- 
called "bounty jumpers" who fattened on the 
fruits of frequent desertion. In the Spanish War 
we mobilized 250,000 men, and killed of them a 
larger proportion through filth, diseases, and incom- 
petent officers than were in sight of the Spanish 
lines. The Great War foimd us equally un- 
prepared; and the Washington Government, so 
far from educating public opinion and protesting 
against the Prussian atrocities, deprecated all 

90 



Preparedness 91 

military preparedness and even blacklisted such 
of our citizens as gave timely warning of impending 
calamity. Our President preached pacifism even 
after the Lusitania massacre, and some of his 
conspicuous friends in ojffice spoke and acted in 
a manner that could give pleasure only in Berlin, 
The then Secretary of State (Bryan), who had 
competed for the Presidency many times, assured 
our ignorant masses over and over again that war 
could never touch these shores and that in case 
of danger nothing more was needed than a Presi- 
dential proclamation and, presto! an army of a 
million well-armed soldiers would spring from the 
ground and chase the Kaiser's army into the sea. 

Our grandchildren will marvel that a scholar of 
the Wilson calibre could tolerate as principal 
member of his cabinet one whose life for a full 
generation had been that of a shallow talker, 
emitting political theories with the fluency and 
earnestness of one whom we look for at the county 
fair selling some patent pain-killer, and each 
grows rich in the process. 

We did finally conclude to mobilize (191 7), but 
instead of an army stamped from the ground in a 
day or two on the Bryan plan, General Pershing 
found that one year was barely sufficient, and even 
then we had to borrow from France artillery and 



92 Prussianism and Pacifism 

air craft whilst England had to provide the ships 
on which our gallant army finally reached Europe 
in safety. West Pointers know that our army in 
France was not a real or complete army; that our 
quota of capable officers was pitifully small and 
that only the most extraordinary intelligence and 
courage could accomplish in one year what in 
Europe had been achieved by three years of fight- 
ing. We voted six hundred millions of dollars 
for aeroplanes that never flew; we seized upon all 
the machinery of industry and commerce through- 
out the country from railways and coal mines to 
motor cars and candy stores. The cost of living 
more than doubled, and labour conditions became 
paradoxical — some imskilled earning ten dollars 
per day in shipyards or munition plants, others 
reduced to want by the difficulty of securing the 
material or the help needed in their little industry. 
Let us add up the millions upon millions taken 
from the pockets of our people through hastily 
made tax laws ; let us note that our medical officers 
inject poison into our recruits by way of prevent- 
ing possible disease. We have so far squirted but 
three kinds of serums into them, but there are 
many dozens on the market and fanaticism amongst 
physicians falls little short of that generated by 
too much theology. In 191 8, through the months 



Salvation by Serum 93 

of January, February, and March the deaths in 
the American army in France from pneumonia 
alone averaged nearly four times those of the same 
period amongst the British troops, although in 
general we had the pick of our men overseas and 
our papers kept up a persistent glorification of 
our matchless medical corps and Red Cross machi- 
nery. The time would seem to have arrived when 
the science of common sense should be applied 
in preference to one which preaches salvation by 
serums. 

In the summer of 1870, Moltke received word 
that his King had declared war, against France. 
"Very well — open draw X Y Z and you will find 
the French frontier — the orders are all made out — 
see that they are delivered. Good day!" and 
the venerable head of the General Staff turned 
over and finished his nap. 

The words used on this memorable occasion 
are immaterial, but the fact that Prussia was 
ready for this or any other war is a fact of impor- 
tance, for it meant that a million Germans were 
swarming over the Rhine and into Alsace-Lorraine 
before Napoleon III. had half completed his plans 
for holding even his frontier fortresses. 

Even strangers could note on all sides the 
increase in military work, the arrival of reserve 



94 Prussianism and Pacifism 

troops, serving out of equipment, trains moving 
at half hour intervals crowded with men, horses, 
artillery. Soon the trains came steaming back 
loaded with French prisoners, Turcos from Alge- 
ria, wounded of both armies. On paper all this 
sounds like an upheaval, but in fact life in the 
Germany of 1870-71, as I saw it at many points 
other than Berlin, ran along normally enough, 
so far as the surface of things was concerned. The 
mobilization, that in America and England shook 
the commercial fabric to its foundations, was 
barely felt on the Elbe or the Rhine. The govern- 
ment had looked ahead and provided in time of 
peace for the strain that would come with war. 
Every cart and every horse is numbered from year 
to year; and hard cash is also stored up against 
the time that the state may wish to purchase much 
and to make no noise about it. The moment 
war is declared there flows a stream of coin from 
each military headquarters directly to the pockets 
of thousands of peasants who know just what is 
expected of them for they have been drilled in 
time. Every farm road now groans with the traffic 
of heavy wagons loaded with produce — all num- 
bered and all headed towards the front with 
minute instructions. The railways are each year 
trained in troop transport, the stations are all 



Efficiency and Mobilization 95 

under military control, and thus in the time which 
we would be wasting by covering our fences with 
liberty posters and holding meetings to encourage 
recruitment, a German army is raised, equipped, 
and deposited on the soil of the enemy. 

In speaking of Moltke as one of the greatest of 
soldiers it seems paradoxical to say that he was 
never himself in command of men. One might 
almost say that he who won the greatest battles 
of his time was never on one of his own battle- 
fields, save when all was over. He won his victo- 
ries by teaching others where and when to strike. 
His battlefield was the war map ; his headquarters 
was a table to which ran telegraph wires from 
every corps; his power lay in the knowledge that 
each regiment was under perfect discipline and 
that when an attack was timed for a certain hour 
it would mean on the stroke of that hour and not 
one minute sooner or later. The French had then 
as ever, an army of brave soldiers and gallant 
officers in the lower grades, but they were as child- 
ren in the great game of war. They had appar- 
ently learned nothing since the Crimea, and more 
particularly had declined to note what the school 
of Moltke had done in Germany. 

One day (1892) an aide-de-camp of Wilhelm II. 
was boasting to me that Germans could afford to 



96 Prussianism and Pacifism 

be generous in regard to the many foreign officers 
who attended their Imperial manoeuvres in mufti. 
His reason was that the one secret of German 
success needed no lock and key, for it was their 
inimitable machinery of mobilization. 

Moltke was merely a man of practical common 
sense who recognized war as a periodically recur- 
ring disease that should be met with all the re- 
sources available. He regarded a pacifist as the 
product of unhealthy social conditions — something 
that should be quarantined. Leagues of nations 
and arbitration societies and organizations to 
enforce peace were all well enough outside of 
Germany, for they weakened his enemies. 

As a man of science he laboured to make it as 
infrequent and as painless as possible. To him 
a battle should be bloodless — the enemy should 
be surrounded and made prisoners, not corpses. 
He would thus have surrounded Metz and Sedan 
in 1870 and then have politely invited their respect- 
ive commanders to an inspection of the German 
lines and surrender. 

Moltke applied to modern warfare the methods 
which Napoleon would have applied had he lived. 
He studied Napoleon and never went beyond that 
general's classic maxim that all of war consists 
in having at a certain point at a certain moment 



What is War? 97 

a certain number of men. Moltke achieved this 
with such scientific simplicity that we today look 
back and marvel that the rest of the world could 
not have developed equal simplicity. 

It was all like the egg of Columbus! and forget 
not that Columbus was not a product of Spain, 
nor was Moltke a Prussian. 



CHAPTER XVI 

Wilhelm Yearns for War in 1859 — More of Moltke 
and Roon — Also Steuben and Kalb 

pRUSSIA has been ever famous for the dull- 
* ness of its court life; the coarseness of its 
aristocracy and the absence of genius, inventive- 
ness, or even originality amongst her people. 
Military rule being easily understood and most 
directly personal, not to say elemental, appeals 
to the Prussian peasant. People who are happy 
under Prussian rule make excellent subordinates 
but dangerous leaders. They may be compared 
to the millions of Bengalee Baboos of India who 
pass easily the literary examinations of English 
colleges ; who can write letters glibly ; frame plaus- 
ible excuses interminably, and otherwise act the 
part" of routine office clerks. But Baboos were 
born without backbones as Prussians were born 
without the higher qualities that make a straight 
sportsman. 

Moltke was a Dane and Roon of French extrac- 



Great Prussians 99 

tion. Indeed nearly every name associated with 
the resurrection of Prussia after the collapse of 
Jena is that of a non-Prussian. We have but 
to recall Scharnhorst, the author of universal 
service in the army; Bliicher; and Gneisenau, his 
chief of staff; Ernst Moritz Arndt and the grand 
old Freiherr von Stein. Not one of these was a 
Prussian and without them we cannot conceive 
of a Hohenzollern participating in the battle of 
Leipsig (1813), much less being recognized at the 
Congress of Vienna (1814). These men took charge 
of Prussia when all her territories combined barely 
exceeded the population of New York or London; 
when her treasury was empty and her throne on 
a par with that of latter-day Greece, Bulgaria, or 
Montenegro. Reverse the picture and ask what 
Prussia has contributed to the rest of the world in 
her own chosen province of military efficiency. 
We of America have good humouredly granted 
pedestals in order that German singing and turn 
societies might thereon rear monuments to alleged 
military heroes who are credited with having 
sacrificed home, fortune, and a glorious career for 
the sake of shedding their blood in the cause of 
American liberty. We know of only one man 
who answers to this description — Lafayette, of 
France. If there is another it is Kosciusko, the 



loo Prussianism and Pacifism 

Pole. Of Prussians I know none, though dozens 
of German names have figured on our military 
annals through influences more political than 
historical. Serious officers about the late Emperor 
have never wearied of assuring me that our North- 
ern States triumphed over those of the South 
(1865) merely because there were so many Ger- 
mans in the Union army. They did not mean to 
be offensive; nor could I more than smile grate- 
fully unless I had intended to insult their under- 
standing. It never does to argue with a Prussian. 
He grows angry and becomes even more fixed in 
his opinion. Conversation can continue only on 
condition that one party declaim and the other 
applaud. Germans declaim loudly on their heroes 
in America — their Siegels and Heintzelmans of the 
Civil War; their De Kalbs and Steubens of the 
Revolution. But real soldiers of the Grant and 
Sherman school dreaded nothing so much as going 
under fire in company with German regiments 
who talked more noisily than they fought. 

Steuben has monuments rivalling those of Frank- 
lin, Hamilton, or even Washington; yet he ob- 
tained his fame and pay in our service by pretend- 
ing to a military rank which he had never held 
at home. The German vote keeps his memory a 
patriotic myth but history knows him only as an 



Great Germans in America loi 

average Prussian drill master who came to America 
for the betterment of his purse and military rank. 
Of De Kalb we know just about as much. His real 
name was Kalb (German for calf) and the noble 
prefix De or Von he pinned on later by way of orna- 
ment. He was a Bavarian peasant who sought his 
fortunes as a restaurant waiter in France, enlisted 
against his own people in the Seven Years' War and 
finally became major-general by act of a credulous 
Congress in our War of Independence. Americans 
have so long submitted to a Teutonic ascendancy 
founded largely upon legendary achievement not 
to say fraud, that it would seem now a suitable 
moment for a revision of our school histories and 
a readjustment of national heroes. Prussian 
propaganda may find it profitable to plant Berlin 
thick with statues of Hohenzollern rulers and 
generals, for these monuments appeal to a public 
trained by centuries of military drill to respect 
only those who wear the dress of a soldier; but 
this country has the blood and traditions of a 
liberty-loving England and whilst we honour a 
Washington and Cromwell we pay equal homage 
to a Franklin or a Bacon, a Shakespeare or a 
Milton. 

That Wilhelm I. should have discovered a 
Moltke and Roon and bound them to him for 



102 Prussianism and Pacifism 

life is noteworthy when we reflect that the King's 
choice was limited to the high aristocracy. There 
have been exceptions, but so rare as to make the 
Prussian rule remarkable. Fortunately for the 
German army, however, aristocracy needs bread 
no less than quarterings, and genius like that of 
Moltke and Roon must find a patron or starve. 

In 1858 Wilhelm displaced his lunatic brother; 
became de facto King and immediately started 
Moltke and Roon at their respective posts with 
very definite purposes in view — first of all to make 
a second revolution impossible. 

In the spring of 1858 there was perhaps no 
more melancholy prince in Germany than Wilhelm. 
He had been already fifty years a soldier yet since 
the fall of Napoleon he had watched with ever 
increasing irritation a growing tendency towards 
peace amongst the nations of Europe. He de- 
tested peace on principle as a period when military 
efficiency relaxes; and, when the Crimean War 
appeared, he loudly complained to his circle of 
friends that here was a splendid opening by which 
the^ Prussian army should profit. He was sixty- 
one years old and mourning that he would soon 
die without ever having been permitted to start 
a first class war or even to have carried through 
his schemes for a reform of the army. Whether 



Irritation of Wilhelm 103 

he contemplated suicide I know not, but his 
lamentations recall the equally ludicrous ones of 
Voltaire who also signed himself moribund at the 
opening of a new era destined to cover several 
decades of unprecedented activity and good health. 

Wilhelm was born grave and dignified; his 
youth was spent under a cloud of military mis- 
fortunes and a dyspeptic father ; he was compelled 
to abandon the only woman he ever loved and to 
grow venerable under an elder brother who sat 
on the Prussian throne as though it were the stall 
in a cathedral, and who knew more of the holy 
places in Palestine than the concentration camps 
of his army. The two royal brothers had little 
in common. Friedrich Wilhelm IV. was voluble, 
vague, and full of half promises. Wilhelm was 
silent, direct, soldierly. The one saw the world 
through stained glass windows and yearned to be 
ranked with the Emperor Constantine. Wilhelm 
saw only what could be reached on the field of 
war by means of the naked eye and a long-range 
gun. 

But in the moment of Wilhelm 's deepest despond- 
ency his mediaeval senior was removed; joy re- 
turned to his bosom and youth was born again. 

War had in the past been his only interest. 
Now as King-Regent he would translate into deeds 



104 Prussianism and Pacifism 

the promises of his heart. The year 1859 seemed 
his and he approached Austria with a view to 
co-operating against France. But he placed condi- 
tions which Franz Josef would not accept and when 
finally matters did adjust themselves diplomati- 
cally so that Wilhelm engaged to mobilize his 
whole army against France, the moment had 
passed — Napoleon III. and Franz Josef had signed 
the Peace of Villa Franca (nth July, 1859). 

For those who see the hand of Providence or 
the influence of heavenly bodies in human affairs, 
this year, 1859, is interesting; for while Wilhelm 
had then his Moltke and Roon, there was no 
Bismarck; and Wilhelm was no diplomat. Had 
Prussia engaged in that war the result would 
have been to benefit her Austrian rival, whereas 
a Bismarck would have waited patiently for a 
better occasion. However the mobilization was 
of value in laying bare many grave defects and 
emphasizing the importance of making military 
efficiency the guiding policy of his reign. The 
matter had become the more important from the 
fact that Austria loudly laid the cause of her cala- 
mities to Prussian treachery; and this cry was 
echoed throughout the South German states where 
such a charge was welcomed as probable even 
though not strictly true. A Wurtemberg military 



South Germany 105 

plenipotentiary (Suckow) reported Wilhelm as be- 
ing very indignant over the rumours current at 
this time and as having addressed a council of 
South German officers in these words: 

"Go home, Gentlemen, and when you meet 
any one accusing me of such things, I beg you 
will slap him in the face — in my name!" 

How many of those present availed themselves 
of this pleasing power of attorney history does 
not record; but the emotions that agitated the 
usually dignified and correct Prince-Regent are 
measured by the violence of his language on this 
occasion. But whilst the War of 1859 was de- 
stined to pass him by, he had made war inevitable 
between Prussia and Austria — had also stirred 
the suspicions of France — and all this when his 
army was at its worst; when Moltke and Roon 
were still at the beginning of their great task and 
Bismarck nowhere in sight. 



CHAPTER XVII 

Preparing the War of 1870 — Bismarck and Napoleon 
— Augusta Victoria and the Empress Frederick 

T X rlLHELM was seventy- three years old in 
' ^ 1870, Moltke was seventy, Roon sixty- 
seven, and Bismarck was a mere youngster of 
fifty-five. This was the quartette that ruled 
Germany with secrecy and force, that moulded 
the army no less than public opinion, and that 
prepared the arena for a fight that was to upset 
Europe as had no previous one since Jena. The 
average age of this great quartette was more than 
sixty-six years but each thirsted for the war with 
the keenness of sixteen years and each con- 
cealed this longing with the craft that comes 
of practice. 

Bismarck was assured by both Moltke and Roon 
that Germany could bring to the firing line not 
merely two men to every one of Napoleon, but 
men better drilled and equipment altogether 
superior. War seemed to Prussia a political 

106 ' 



North and South Germans 107 

necessity because Bavaria and the rest of South 
Germany were showing renewed signs of restless- 
ness under HohenzoUern pretensions. Those famil- 
iar with German ethnology need not be told that 
there is more difference of blood between peasants 
of Bavaria and those of the Baltic than between 
Swedes and Spaniards. They have a common 
language, but only amongst those of higher educa- 
tion. The average farm labourer of Mecklenburg 
could no more follow a folks theatre performance 
on the Danube than could a French Canadian 
trapper understand an address at the Sorbonne. 
Furthermore Bavaria was very Catholic and 
'Prussia very Lutheran. Time has done much to 
modify these divergences. Bavaria has become 
more liberal in matters of theology, and Wilhelm 
II. became less Lutheran, not to say more 
Papist. Increased facilities of travel have 
helped the language question, and commercial 
reciprocity in a well-framed customs union has 
enriched a large number of merchants and 
manufacturers who frequently vote for their 
pockets. 

But however much the matter of language and 
theology may in the future favour Prussian domi- 
nation, there will remain ever the cleavage made 
by difference in blood — a cleavage that was there 



io8 Prussianism and Pacifism 

in the days of the Roman Empire and can be 
altered only by extirpation root and branch; and 
sowing on the vacated soil the dragon teeth of a 
Brandenburg Cadmus. 

The Russian Czar not only was friendly to 
Wilhelm I. but stood ready to check any hostile 
movement that Austria might attempt.. All now 
depended on France; for it was necessary that 
Bismarck should run out into the highways of the 
world and make everyone believe that he was the 
soul of peace but that he had been compelled to 
take up arms, not merely for the defence of Prus- 
sia, but much more for the honour of his dear 
allies in South Germany. And so he kept the 
big war bell booming in the Berlin temple; kept 
the papers full of alleged news from Paris calcu- 
lated to give the impression that Napoleon meant 
to march against the Rhine. To the Reichstag 
he unfolded his honest heart, his hope that all 
good Germans would close up their ranks under 
Prussian leadership in this hour of peril. Mean- 
time towards the helpless and suffering Napoleon 
he showed through diplomatic channels that he 
felt that kind of contempt which one trickster 
feels for the pal whom he has outwitted. 

Bismarck demanded war — the sooner the better ; 
in this case he made the Spanish throne a pretext. 



Bismarck a Good Hater 109 

Had a HohenzoUem Prince not been selected for 
this , vacant post, another pretext would have 
served equally well. The ostensible reasons for 
a needless war I am glad to leave to others, for 
they have little to do with the march of events. 
The causes of the 1870 war are to me of no more 
interest than those adduced by Wilhelm II. for 
his irruption into Belgium — the important thing 
for us to know is that in 1870 the King and his 
Chancellor demanded war as a prime political 
necessity and that its success depended largely 
upon the South German states who were made to 
believe that they were in peril and that under 
Hohenzollern leadership they could alone find 
security. 

Bismarck was a good hater — and amongst those 
whom he singled out for the objects of his thinly 
veiled aversion were the respective wives of both 
Wilhelm I. and his son the then Crown Prince, 
later Emperor Frederick. Each of these women 
represented schools of thought and breeding for- 
eign to the Pomeranian squire. Each lived in a 
world of ideas and ideals; they were interested in 
the education of women; in training schools for 
nurses; they cultivated the conversation of trav- 
ellers, men of science, artists, and notably of emi- 
nent foreigners sojourning in the capital. This 



no Prussianism and Pacifism 

subject is delicate to handle — a woman's hand 
should here be substituted and I refer with much 
relief to Lady Russell's incomparable light on the 
quality of Prussian home life in court circles no 
less than less important ones as illustrated in the 
pages of The Benefactress, The Solitary Summer, 
The Caravaners. She has reflected the living 
truth but for the sake of a superstitious public 
has given to her books the euphemistic label of 
"Fiction." 

Augusta Victoria was not Prussian, far from it. 
Her marriage with Wilhelm I. was a matter of 
statecraft and Berlin with its military methods 
and intellectual materialism sickened her, after 
the literary and artistic experiences in her home 
town, Weimar. Her grandfather was the prince 
who had made this little capital a centre for the 
best minds of Germany. Aside from Schiller 
and Goethe, Weimar in the opening of the nine- 
teenth century was to Northern Europe what 
Boston was to North America in the days of 
Prescott, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Longfellow. 
The world of letters made pilgrimages to this 
little Thuringian court and lingered gladly in its 
pleasing neighbourhood when Berlin offered no 
attraction save to a soldier or commercial traveller. 
Augusta Victoria penetrated the hypocritical dis- 



Empress Frederick m 

guise of Bismarck and shrank from the brutal 
methods which he had not the deHcacy to 
disguise. 

Her daughter-in-law shared these views; and 
as a child of Queen Victoria she took far less pains 
to conceal them than her more Germanically 
trained mother-in-law. These two ladies had for 
the great Chancellor that species of aversion 
which the high-bred rarely fail to exhibit to those 
whom they look upon as not quite the gentleman 
— something of an "outsider." There was no 
question of the loyalty of these two princesses, 
whether to their husbands or to the flag of their 
new country; yet to their very end, Bismarck 
delighted in spreading evil rumours about them 
in order to undermine their influence in Germany. 
Augusta Victoria spent all the time possible in a 
country home on the Rhine, and the Crown Prin- 
cess, who was very happy with her husband, 
formed a circle of their own, lived much in the 
country, saw of Berlin only what was officially 
necessary, and held a salon where the Bismarck- 
minded felt themselves out of place. 

These women did not encourage the pan-German 
schemes that were fashionable with Wilhelm and 
the Yunkers ; they saw in war a necessary evil where 
Bismarck regarded it as a wholesome exercise. 



112 Prussianism and Pacifism 

And of course Bismarck hated these women. But 
the first lady of France, the beautiful Eugenie 
— she did just what the Prussian Chancellor most 
desired ! She urged war. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

War of 1870 — Napoleon and the Vatican — Collapse 

of France at Sedan — Prussian Treatment 

of Prisoners 

TF one dared generalize in so delicate a matter it 
might be profitable to comment on the fact 
that in 1870 the warmest support of Napoleon III. 
was the Roman Church and that support cost him 
his throne. In 1914, Wilhelm II. found in the 
Vatican his dearest encouragement — and he too 
lost his throne. United Italy has had but one 
serious enemy, the Pope; and consequently she 
has grown and prospered. In 1870, Austria would 
have yielded to papal influence and aided France 
had not the Russian Czar bluntly announced that 
in such an event Russia would mobilize on Prussian 
behalf. And Bavaria balanced long and seriously 
before she yielded to the pressure from Berlin; 
for Bavaria is but little behind Austrian Tyrol 
in ardent clericalism. The wars of 1870 and 191 4 
have this of the paradox that Wilhelm I. stood 
8 113 



114 Prussianism and Pacifism 

forth to the neutral world as the champion of 
Protestantism and universal education against a 
priest-ridden France. In 191 4, a Lutheran Wil- 
helm II. represented papal pretensions whilst 
Catholic France represented the right of a free 
people to govern itself without the intermeddling 
of an alien theocrat. Napoleon in 1870 was urged 
to his doom by a religious corporation claiming 
universal dominion. In the Holy Land and Asia 
Minor he claimed to be papal champion of Chris- 
tian missions. The war in China (i860) had been 
fought for the same pious end; and the mad 
venture into Mexico (1864) had been warmly 
advocated by the beautiful Empress and her ul- 
tramontane court. At every step in the career 
of Napoleon we have to hunt for the influence of 
his evil genius of Rome, and our search rarely 
leads further than the hoop skirts of a Spanish 
siren. 

Italy could have been allied to France in 1870 
had Napoleon been loyal to her people instead of 
to the Pope. But again the interests of France 
were sacrificed to those of the Vatican and a 
French army insulted Italy by acting as protective 
guard of honour to Pius IX. If there was a po- 
htical blunder that Napoleon did not commit 
between 1848 and his flight from Sedan, it must 



Jobbery of Napoleon III. 115 

be that Eugenie failed to suggest it to his vacil- 
lating vision. We have but to note the undeviat- 
ing, persistent, and brutally practical line pursued 
by Wilhelm I. over these same twenty-two years 
in order to appreciate the helpless manner in 
which the Napoleonic ship of state filled and backed 
and fell off and finally broached to while a furious 
gale smashed the seas over her and knocked 
the lubberly quartermaster from a rebellious 
wheel. 

Moltke and Roon had a well-founded contempt 
for the French military machine, its general staff, 
its leaders, its equipment, and above all, for its 
Emperor. But even these experts were surprised 
by the extent to which political jobbery had under- 
mined an army which seemed to be joking when 
it styled itself Napoleonic. Bismarck had craftily 
stung France into making the first war move 
(July 15th), by voting a vast credit; and as the 
war party of the Empress had loudly boasted that 
the army was in perfect condition even down to 
the last button on the gaiters of the youngest 
drummer boy, what wonder that the gallant men 
marched out singing gaily "i Berlin!" little 
dreaming that only as prisoners of war would 
their refrain be realized. 

So confident of success was this army that they 



ii6 Prussianism and Pacifism 

carried maps of Germany, but none of the land 
between Sedan, Metz, and the Rhin«. The Paris 
papers bragged and vapoured mendaciously, as 
did those of Berlin in 191 4 — and from cognate 
causes. Napoleon went forth to the war amid 
mad cries of Vive VEmpereur and the little Prince 
Napoleon went also to his "baptism of fire." The 
curtain went up before an enthusiastic audience 
assisted by a highly paid orchestra. But the 
performance left much to be desired. For many 
reasons inexplicable to the average French tax- 
payer, the much -promised mobilization moved 
slowly everywhere and in some cases broke down 
completely. The army of half a million veterans 
destined to cross the Rhine and march upon Berlin 
faded away with painful regularity while, at the 
end of July, Prussia stood ready for the fight with 
about one million, and wondered when the French 
would make their first attack. But poor France 
had been horribly hoodwinked in regard to her 
fighting forces ; and after two weeks of preparation 
her armies were found floundering about anywhere 
between Metz and the Swiss frontier in vain 
seeking serious contact one with another — in 
vain looking for some general plan of action; in 
vain seeking to fill up the many vacancies in the 
ranks, and above all looking in vain for a ray of 



French Debacle 117 

hope from the imperial dotard to whom it was 
agony to mount into the saddle. 

The French armies floundered about within their 
own frontiers during the blistering heat of August 
— they knew not what they were doing — every 
map of France seemed in German hands at that 
time. They asked of their officers, but these 
knew little more than the men. Yet never did 
braver soldiers march than those veterans of the 
Second Empire, men who could show honourable 
scars from battlefields far apart as Pekin or Pueblo ; 
Algiers or Inkerman, Magenta or Solferino. They 
feared nothing save dishonour and, although they 
were but as one to three of Germany, never did 
men fight in a lost cause more gallantly than 
those who in battle after battle were outnumbered 
and outgeneraled until Metz and Sedan crowned 
the climax of imperial incompetence. 

How many of those rugged hands have I not 
had in mine! And how vividly do I recall the 
fortress of Erfurt where I mingled with prisoners 
fresh from the bloody fields of Sarrebruck, Woerth, 
and Wissenbourg. All my schoolboy savings I 
had invested in tobacco, but without that pass- 
port I had a key to their confidence acquired by 
seven years of childhood in Paris. They gave me 
all they knew and all they felt. Their news was 



ii8 Prussianism and Pacifism 

comparatively fresh, for they had come by train 
direct from the Front and had much to tell which 
no French newspapers were then allowed to pub- 
lish. The debacle of Sedan was foreshadowed 
in the earlier encounters; and these details were 
poured into the ears of an American lad in Thu- 
ringia nearly a month before they became known 
to the boulevards of Paris. 

Never was a war more craftily planned nor more 
rapidly carried to its climax. In Germany the 
daily bulletin was a daily victory, commencing 
with the first skirmishes at the beginning of August 
and moving in a crescendo line to the capture of 
Napoleon and his army at Sedan, on September 
2d. Events moved so rapidly, the German armies 
were so busily occupied in hard marching and 
fighting, that little was heard of atrocities such 
as amazed and outraged the civilized world in 
1914. Never had a nation better excuse for 
generosity towards a brave beaten foe than Prussia 
had towards those whom she captured in August 
of 1870. And I recall the generous treatment of 
England towards Boer prisoners; of Uncle Sam 
towards those she took in the Spanish War, and 
of Russians interned in Japan (1905). In these 
cases the prisoners were treated almost as guests 
of the nation and permitted a diet even better 



French Prisoners in 1870 119 

than that of their captors. But the Prussian has 
no such word as generosity in his lexicon, and the 
French prisoners in Erfurt were compelled to live 
on the sour black bread which to them is dieteti- 
cally a poison, as would be to me certain dishes 
that delight a Laplander or a Siamese. It would 
have cost little had Prussia provided her prisoners 
with the food to which they were accustomed — 
good coffee and milk and white bread for a morn- 
ing meal — but no, it would appear that the authori- 
ties desired an epidemic of dysentery — anything 
rather than show to the conquered the quality 
that makes true glory to him who conquers. 

Every Frenchman with whom I talked in Erfurt 
accused their military chiefs of having been 
traitors — and how could they otherwise explain 
their mysterious disasters — an army of unsullied 
record for twenty years to be in one short month 
driven from one position after another and finally 
penned up like sheep for the shambles! These 
were bitter concomitants to the sour black bread, 
and lost nothing of their sting for being uttered 
in a city of Germany where the Great Napoleon 
had within the memory of men then living con- 
voked the famous "parterre of Kings." The 
soldiers of that Napoleon suffered also, but none 
thought of crying: "Nous sommes trahis!" — nor 



120 Prussianism and Pacifism 

has that cry been heard from amongst the thou- 
sands of brave Frenchmen who have suffered at 
Hun hands in this Great War. Lee surrendered 
unconditionally his whole army — yet not a man of 
them but would have begged for a benediction at 
his hands. It is perhaps the most crushing in- 
dictment ever sustained by the second French 
Empire that the very soldiers of the Imperial 
Guard cursed their officers as traitors. 



CHAPTER XIX 

. Coronation of Wilhelm at Versailles 

THE military prestige of France disappeared 
when Napoleon IH. surrendered himself to 
Wilhelm I. at Sedan. The news of this catas- 
trophe was the signal for revolution in Paris; 
Eugenie fled for her life to the shelter of an Ameri- 
can dentist while her husband was conducted as 
prisoner of war to the Prussian palace of Wilhelms- 
hohe. The Empress > finally reached England in 
disguise where she was joined by the rest of her 
distracted family. Her husband died in a couple 
of years at the early age of sixty-five; her son was 
killed by the assegai of a Kaffir in Zululand, a few 
years later. But the evil genius of latter-day 
Napoleonism has shown phenomenal vitality in 
the person of the ex-Empress, now more than 
ninety years of age. Is it her punishment? Was 
she preserved that she might see France shake off 
the shackles of Romanist domination which her 
bigoted influence had helped to forge? Has the 

121 



122 Prussianism and Pacifism 

Greek drama any more potent Nemesis than what 
broods behind this venerable sinner when she is 
made to know that the France that was trailed 
in the dust behind a Prussian war chariot in 1870, 
now, after a generation of self-government dictates 
her sovereign will to a demoralized German army? 
Let the Furies force this knowledge upon her as 
she mumbles over her beads and crosses herself 
in senile bigotry. Let her know that France was 
crushed because Pius IX. was on her side; and 
make her now quiver, ye messengers of historic 
vengeance, with the damning truth that France 
is once more great because she is once more free. 
Wilhelm L chose the palace of Louis XIV. as 
the scene of his coronation; possibly Bismarck 
chose it for him — which would be about the same 
thing. There was something dramatically im- 
pressive in this grand act, for it was this same Roi 
Soleil who had sent his most Catholic armies into 
the Protestant Upper Rhine land and driven from 
their farms into exile thousands of people whose 
only crime consisted in having in their youth 
learned from a different catechism than his. In 
Prussia, Louis XIV. stood for all that was tyran- 
nical in political or theological belief. Moreover 
he was odious because of his artificial and very 
costly display of wealth. He died smothered in 



Kaiser Crowning at Versailles 123 

priestly vapours and financial overdrafts which 
crippled the government of his successors and did 
much to make inevitable the bloody liquidation 
which commenced with the fall of the Bastille. 

That Wilhelm I., as protagonist of a Protestant 
Prussia, should crown himself Kaiser of Germany 
in the sanctuary of France's most Romanist of 
Bourbons, gave deUght that vented itself in every 
schoolroom throughout the fatheriand. Catholic 
Germany moderated its joy; but even there, the 
thought of a victory over the hereditary French 
foe made them for the moment neglect their 
hereditary patron in Rome. 

Wilhelm had already been crowned King of 
Prussia in Konigsberg. A decade had passed; and 
now on the i8th of January, 1871, this monarch, 
whose years numbered neariy three quarters of a 
century, was called upon for the supreme sacrifice 
—nothing less than a degradation— from Prussian 
King to German Emperor ! He had been a sancti- 
fied sovereign, an autocrat, or should we say a 
monarch divine of the autodynamic order whose 
will in Prussia was the only law. He had a Reichs- 
tag and he had a chancellor and these occasionally 
annoyed him, but what planter in the palmy days 
of slavery had not frequent cause of complaint 
against pet servants whom he spoiled and who in 



124 Prussianism and Pacifism 

turn bullied their master! Bismarck was but a 
spoiled butler in the eyes of Wilhelm, and for that 
reason the aged monarch submitted to much for 
the sake of a loyal and indefatigable service. 

And Bismarck had indeed a difficult job before 
him — to placate the German people, to placate 
the German princes, and, finally, to overcome the 
feelings of his pious and tearful King. As a poli- 
tician Bismarck knew that the world at large, and 
the German-speaking world in particular, would 
be pleasantly impressed by the picture of a whole 
people represented in the Parliament of a United 
Germany, offering the Crown of Empire to the 
dean of a royal faculty. The picture is pleasing 
and as a piece of Hohenzollern propaganda has 
had much success — notably in America — but 
the picture is false. Wilhelm I. detested popular 
sovereignty in every form ; and the idea of accept- 
ing a crown from the dirty hands of the common 
people revolted him as it had his elder brother in 
1849. To the Germans of Cape Town, Chicago, 
and Melbourne it was a soul-soaking consolation 
that in 1871 the Reichstag had as its presiding 
officer the same patriot (Simson) who had in analo- 
gous capacity offered the Imperial crown to 
Frederick Wilhelm IV., twenty-two years before. 
Liederkranz and beer clubs dwell melodiously 



Parliamentary Deputation 125 

and huskily from Hoboken to Milwaukee on the 
loving bonds which bind the people to their Kaiser, 
and they see the symbol of this in the rugged 
popular tribune handing Wilhelm his crown in the 
name of Wir Deutsche! If anything could have 
made the idea of a constitutional empire more 
odious than it had always been in his eyes it was 
this very coincidence of having it thrust at him 
by a representative whose record was made in 
the '48 Revolution. Simson should have been 
shot long ago, thought Wilhelm; and hard was the 
conflict between himself and his chancellor before 
he could be induced to even receive the Parlia- 
mentary deputation with the barest forms of 
external civility. He gave them the plainest hint 
that their services were not needed; that this 
coronation was no business of the Reichstag; that 
their long journey from Berlin was merely a 
burden to the railway service. 

He was annoyed by this intrusion of men in 
frock coats, white ties, and silk hats at a moment 
when he wished a radiant display of military uni- 
forms and princely pomp. Simson lived to cele- 
brate his ninetieth birthday, but Wilhelm never 
forgave him the double impertinence of offering 
an Imperial crown to a Prussian King first in 1849 
and again in 1871. When Frederick III. as- 



126 Prussianism and Pacifism 

cended the throne in 1888 he sought to do a 
tardy act of justice by decorating the venerable 
patriot, much to the disgust of Bismarck and all 
orthodox Yunkers. 

The people of Germany shouted jubilantly for 
Wilhelm Kaiser as all France had voted for 
Napoleon III. at the outset. But Wilhelm would 
accept of the crown only in the character of a 
legitimate sovereign — and since he did not recognize 
the Pope's authority in these matters the next 
best source of legitimacy lay in the unanimous 
vote of brother initiates. How happy would 
Napoleon have been had he secured a pope to 
place the crown on his head, and indeed it seems 
criminal carelessness on his part to have neglected 
a feature so important not to say dramatic, in 
orthodox eyes. Napoleon I. had kidnapped one 
for this purpose and the concordat was, therefore, 
not wholly wasted. What was there to prevent 
Napoleon III. from securing Pius IX. as equivalent 
for the French regiments that garrisoned the 
papal states! There was abundant precedent, 
to cite" merely the Emperor Charles V. who first 
flooded Rome with his German mercenaries, 
sacked the Holy City by way of paying his men 
arrears of money due them, and then compelled 
Clement VII. to sanctify him and crown him and 



Kidnapping a Pope 127 

bless him, all of which happened yesterday, to- 
morrow, 1530, in point of fact, but the date is 
immaterial. The moral is important. Charles V. 
lived and died honoured by popes and powers 
temporal though he pillaged Rome and kidnapped 
her Pontifex Maximus. Poor Louis Napoleon 
propped up the fortunes of Pius at great cost to 
himself, alienated his people, and lost his own 
throne — all because he did not carry a pope to 
Paris for coronation purposes! Popes are coy; 
they preach peace, but like many maids, they 
make sheep's eyes at the burly kidnappers against 
whom they first exhaust their nails and lamenta- 
tions. 

The princes of Germany came tamely to the 
Bismarckian call. The smaller the principality 
the more tamely did the prince respond. The 
larger ones looked about for means of curbing 
Prussian ambition and they succeeded in securing 
for themselves something that looked remotely 
like a constitution. Prussia professed most liberal 
views towards Germany in general and insisted 
only upon what was obviously useful for the general 
welfare, an efficient army, under the leadership 
of the Prussian monarch, soon to be called German 
Emperor. Bismarck made the wording of this 
contract sound very reasonable, especially the 



128 Prussianism and Pacifism 

clauses which apparently left to the individual 
states bountiful measure of local self-government 
and guaranteed the territories and privileges of 
each little potentate. For well did the Chancellor 
know that the essential was force and that with 
Prussia in command of the whole army, the rest 
could safely be left to time and to economic 
legislation already in operation. 



CHAPTER XX 

Ludwig of Bavaria Helps to Make the Empire — 
Wilhelm I. Discouraged in 1871 

THHE GREAT DAY WES approaching, and with it 
-■• arose difficulties that would have alarmed 
a less crafty minister than Bismarck. Wilhelm 
objected to surrendering his hereditary title of 
Prussian King, and Ludwig of Bavaria objected 
with even more vehemence to an Imperial crown 
on a Prussian head. The pious Wilhelm sought 
refuge in tears and prayers while the more roman- 
tic Ludwig quenched his political worries in long 
draughts of Wagner music. This King resembled 
Frederick Wilhelm IV. of Prussia in his passion 
for mediaeval unrealities and the glamour of an 
Imperial crown. Both died in mad houses or un- 
der the medical restraint reserved for paranoiacs. 
Both professed the loftiest sentiments, both la- 
boured for a broader education amongst their 
people and a higher standard of human legislation. 
Whether one or the other was really mad, I cannot 
9 129 



130 Prussianism and Pacifism 

tell, but Prussia was ruled by Yunkers and Bava- 
ria by Jesuits. Nothing could be more natural, 
therefore, than for a jury of Brandenburg to pro- 
claim any King insane who coquetted with the 
wider problems of humanity; and as for Munich 
and Hohenschwangau, their King must surely be 
possessed of a Protestant devil if he encouraged 
free schools under lay teachers! The attitude of 
a Prussian Yunker towards a democrat is much 
the same as that of a Bavarian priest towards a 
Lutheran, of an American dragoon towards an 
Apache; not far from the feeling which Philip II. 
had for the reformer of Wittenberg or Louis XIV. for 
his Huguenot subjects. We first adopt the theory 
that whoever holds an opposite view to ours must 
be either a traitor or a lunatic — and in either case 
he is dangerous to the community and should be 
destroyed. Whether therefore Ludwig was mad 
or not matters little, he was an enemy to many 
pretensions of the Papacy and he fell. The pre- 
text for his fall I refer to those who study history 
amongst pigeonholes and card catalogues. 

He had been taken from his university studies 
in order to succeed his father on the throne, and 
had from the outset (1864) been called upon to 
face in Bavaria political problems that would 
have taxed a strong statesman, and which easily 



Mad Ludwig 131 

overwhelmed a modern Hamlet. He dreamed of 
a Germanic Empire but woke to the sound of 
Prussian artillery forging the federation by means 
of "blood and iron." He dreamed of a League 
of Nations inspired by love of the true and the 
good and the beautiful; he woke to see Prussia 
first crunching up and then swallowing down com- 
placently the successive members of this flabby 
fabric. He dreamed of educating his people and 
woke to find a peasantry however loyal to their 
King, still more loyal to their parish priest. Then 
Ludwig prayed and God sent him Richard Wagner. 
Here at last was the Mephisto who could restore 
serenity to the melancholy spirit which had been 
profoundly acerbated by contact with rude reali- 
ties. Forget not that Wilhelm had prepared his 
abdication document and had found a Bismarck! 
Ludwig was born under less happy conjunctions. 
He loved the fairy world evoked by Wagnerian 
magic; flying Dutchmen were to him more inter- 
esting than towboats on the Danube; the Rhine 
was in his eyes a reservoir of beautiful nymphs, 
and the recesses of his Alpine parks concealed 
mythical monsters destined to delight him when 
mechanically projected in his court opera. Lud- 
wig could not save Wagner from the Jesuits who 
chased him out of Bavaria in 1866 as it had ex- 



132 Prussianism and Pacifism 

pelled the beautiful and accomplished Lola Montez 
in 1848; but he aided the author of Lohengrin to 
the extent of his influence and purse; and it is to 
this remarkable friendship that Bavarians should 
now be grateful when they find their little state a 
Mecca to the world of art. 

Ludwig did much for his country by erecting 
palaces that are architectural marvels and by 
encouraging the sister arts in every field. Of 
him it might be said that when he ascended the 
throne (1864) he became head of a German state 
resembling a dozen other ones; and that when he 
died, Bavaria, in spite of her military disasters 
and political failures, had become not merely the 
most important among the secondary states of the 
German Empire, but in what is essential to civili- 
zation, the superior of Berlin. All this was the 
work partly of Ludwig L (who abdicated with 
Lola Montez!) but much more of Ludwig IL, 
whom the priests harried to his death. 

When the Imperial crown was being discussed 
at Versailles, Ludwig IL was no longer on speak- 
ing terms with his ministers and he had no Bis- 
marck to speak for him. In vain did messengers 
attempt to draw him from his happy retreats — 
he would communicate only on paper and on no 
account leave a scene of enchantment for a noisy 



Bavaria in 1870 133 

railway ride to the Prussian headquarters. WU- 
helm would listen to no Kaiser proposition save 
from the lips of his brethren in the purple, and 
here was the great day at hand and the principal 
actor, the Hamlet of the play, declined to make 
appearance — could not even be approached on the 
subject of his part in the great drama! The 
clerical or ultramontane influence in the govern- 
ment was of course profoundly annoyed at the 
idea of adding to the prestige of a Lutheran King; 
and Ludwig himself had a wholly different con- 
ception of the Holy Roman Empire than that put 
on paper by Bismarck. However, the knot was 
finally cut by a letter, which the Prussian Chan- 
cellor framed so well that Ludwig drew from it 
the pleasing surmise that Bavaria after all was 
to play the most important or at least the most 
dramatic role; and all this without the painful 
journey to Versailles. Bismarck could write very 
persuasively; and never did he exert himself more 
or to better purpose than in an autograph letter 
to the distracted Ludwig in which he posed as the 
faithful old servant who honoured the King of 
Bavaria and desired his happiness and fame above 
all things. He pictured the grand moment when 
all the kings and kinglets of the Empire would 
bow before Ludwig and from him receive a sum- 



134 Prussianism and Pacifism 

mons to recognize Wilhelm as Emperor. Who 
could resist such an appeal to histrionic impulse! 
To patronize a Wagner was truly noble — but to 
create also a German Kaiser! Could he resist? 
Of course not! And so at the eleventh hour 
Bavaria gave her kingly autograph to a letter of 
Bismarck's dictation which, when read aloud to 
a world ignorant of state machination, sounded 
as though a jubilant Germany had rallied to the 
HohenzoUem throne at the call of a Wittelsbach 
herald. 

How serious these moments were which preceded 
the 1 8th of January, 1871, it is not easy to exag- 
gerate — they recall dark moments of 1848 and 1862. 
The German schoolboys of that time heard and 
saw nothing but outward jubilation and triumph- 
ant bulletins. The pictorial press flooded every 
home with elaborate pictures alleged to have been 
drawn by eyewitnesses but really done in the 
studios of Leipzig and Berlin; these made one 
see the venerable Wilhelm like a reincarnate and 
bewhiskered Siegfried cantering majestically amid 
the exploding shells of an orthodox battlefield, 
and escorted by various German princes who 
gazed rapturously upon their beloved leader as 
though to symbolize the yearning of all German 
states for Prussian rule. Of course we all believed 



Versailles 135 

these pious fabrications then and Germany is 
carefully suckled from generation to generation 
on text-books that bear no more resemblance to 
history than does the Athanasian Creed to the 
Sermon on the Mount. While, therefore, the 
banners of Prussia are frantically waving at 
Versailles and salvos of artillery are announcing 
that the German Empire has been born again in 
the war lord of Brandenburg, let us follow this 
triumphant chief to his writing desk where he can 
divest himself for a moment of imperial burdens 
and write the truth to his aged wife Augusta: 

It is impossible for me to tell you how wretchedly 
downcast I have been these past days owing partly 
to the high responsibility which I am now called upon 
to accept, partly to my suffering when I see the title 
of Prussian pushed into the background. Yesterday 
I was so bitter and discouraged when the matter was 
discussed that I was on the point of abdicating and 
handing everything over to Fritz! (Crown Prince), 
Only after having turned myself to God in deep and 
searching prayer was I able to recover my serenity 
and strength! 



CHAPTER XXI 

Prussia Dictates the Terms of Peace in 1871 and 
Wilhelm Makes his Third Entry into Paris 

\^nLHELM I. had selected the i8th of Janu- 
' ' ary, because on that date one hundred 
and seventy years before, Prussia had been raised 
to the rank of a kingdom; and he desired above 
all else to advertise the fact that this war and its 
imperial ending was a Prussian, not a mere German 
achievement. The propaganda press of the day 
studiously fed the receptive public with carefully 
concocted reports showing the venerable Wilhelm 
in the theatrical robes of a Charlemagne or Bar- 
barossa rolling his eyes to heaven whilst the Bava- 
rian King frantically acts the part of an apoplectic 
choragos to a horde of cheering princes and 
parliaYnentary dignitaries. Bismarck knew that 
this picture would do good; and it is thus that 
the average German still imagines that historic 
moment. He does not wish to hear that Ludwig 
of Bavaria was absent; still less that Wilhelm I. 

136 



Armistice i37 

rejected with scorn the mere idea of exchanging 
his Prussian uniform for any robes however im- 
perial. It was to him a ceremony purely military 
and as such carried out with no more regard for 
public opinion or convenience than a swearing 
in of Potsdam recruits. The press of the world 
magnified the setting of this dramatic scene; 
for that press knew little beyond what Bismarck 
wished them to know. 

He was proclaimed Kaiser whilst his guns were 
bombarding Paris; and, as though the struggle 
against a besieging Germany was not enough, 
civil war added its horrors ; and the Prussian army 
of occupation could complacently eat its three 
meals a day whilst French killed French in a 
struggle that cost about fifty thousand lives 
and many monuments which Paris prized as her 
dearest. 

A few days after Wilhelm became Emperor, 
and on the birthday of his grandson, the fugitive 
of Amerongen (January 27th), Bismarck dictated 
an armistice to Jules Favre, which was followed 
by a preliminary treaty of peace (February 26th) 
dictated to Thiers. This was finally made formal 
by the death sentence delivered at Frankfort 
(May 10, 1871); a sentence that Germans called 
a treaty of peace, but which her victims could 



138 Prussianism and Pacifism 

regard only as a summons to prepare for a life 
and death duel in 191 4. 

If France escaped any humiliation that Prussia 
could impose upon her between the investment of 
Paris (September 19, 1870) and the final act of 
that war, be sure that it caused pain to Bismarck. 
With the naive bluntness of a Genseric, he roared 
with joy when a French village was wrecked and 
civilians shot who had been suspected of defending 
their homes. He growled his disfavour when he 
heard of prisoners — they should have been shot! 
And as for the sentimentalists who objected to 
the bombardment of Paris, towards them he could 
not be respectful even though married to Hohen- 
zoUerns. We may easily picture the vandalism of 
officers and men when such talk from the Chan- 
cellor's table reached the scattered regiments! 
Is it a wonder that the name Bismarck and 
Prussien became bywords for barbarity, lust, and 
sacrilege wherever French villages felt the burden 
of German occupation? With my father I called 
upon many of his old friends in Paris, immediately 
after 'the war; and listened amazed while tale 
after tale of atrocity was related circumstantially 
by men of mature age and exalted character. 
Not until 191 4 could I fully believe that Prussians, 
in 1870, could act in conquered villages of France 



Thiers and Favre 139 

after the manner of legendary Huns in Roman 
provinces. Thiers and Favre were notable schol- 
ars, men of letters, and statesmen. But in the 
cabinet of Bismarck they shrivelled to the pro- 
portions of a schoolboy under the frowns of 
an offended master. The Iron Chancellor, like his 
King, never appeared save in armour, for he appre- 
ciated the moral value of a heavy cavalry sabre 
and shiny steel helmet. Thiers was then seventy- 
four years old, the Nestor of historians and a power 
in the Republic of Letters. Favre was his junior 
— albeit six years older than Bismarck — and was 
then in the front rank of the Paris bar to say 
nothing of literature. But the event would have 
been the same had a ghostly deputation with 
Moliere, Voltaire, and Montesquieu pleaded for 
mercy. France was to drink of the dregs and 
Bismarck grinned at every gulp. He played with 
the French plenipotentiaries much as might a 
burly ruffian who is eating the lunch of a passing 
school child, amused by the infantile explosions 
of anger and tears. Burly ruffians may have a 
run of luck, but the little child grows up and some- 
times lives to see her tormentor punished. Well 
had it been for Wilhelm had he listened to the 
pleadings of Thiers and Favre rather than the 
harsh terms which harmonized with his predatory 



HO Prussianism and Pacifism 

instincts. France had to accept, and so peace 
preliminaries were signed. Immediately after- 
wards Wilhelm marched as Imperator Triumphato 
(March ist) through the Napoleonic Arc de Tri- 
omphe and camped as conqueror in the Champs 
Elysees. This was necessary in order that nothing 
be omitted that could humiliate a defeated enemy. 
In 1 91 8, Prussia was the defeated enemy, yet 
France halted at the Rhine. Sentimentally this 
was noble, but politically a blunder; for we should 
not act softly towards one who misunderstands 
our motives. The Prussian will always hate us 
with the malice of a beaten bully; but now he 
despises us as well for not having exploited the 
power that was ours. Had we marched our 
armies across the whole of Germany in so leisurely 
a manner as to have occupied at some time or 
other every town and village between the Rhine 
and the Baltic, the children of today would have 
told the tale to their grandchildren who in turn 
would repeat it to"- a generation yet unborn ; and 
so for a century to come the land of the Hun would 
be a land of peace because it remembered the 
millions of men who in the great war chased their 
Kaiser into exile, scattered their boasted armies, 
bottled up their big navy, and promenaded in 
derision all over Deutschland before embarking 



Entry into Paris 141 

for their homes. That was a lesson sorely needed, 
and if they do not receive it, in 19 19, they will all 
believe that we were afraid to push forward any 
farther — and that means a new war not far off ! 

Wilhelm had twice before marched with Prus- 
sian troops into the French capital (181 4 and 181 5), 
but this glorious third was the culmination of all 
earthly ambition. In the wars against the great 
Napoleon, Prussia was only one of many allies 
and her army had to be equipped and paid by 
England. Now, however, her King commanded 
the strongest military organization in the whole 
world, and rode into the capital of a shattered 
empire the more proudly for feeling that he was 
the first Caesar in a new and vigorous nation 
called by divine grace to exterminate a people 
that had survived their military fame and had, 
therefore, merited their fate. 



CHAPTER XXII 

Wilhelm I. Makes Berlin Capital of Germany — Some 
Remarks on this — A Monument to Schiller 

OERLIN on the i6th of June in the year 187 1 
'-^ was the centre of the world to all who 
honoured military glory personified by Wilhelm I. 
From sunrise of this very long day the streets of 
the Prussian capital were crowded with hurrying 
families bearing babies and lunch-baskets, all 
seeking a spot whence they might cheer their 
sovereign and his troops. All day long I watched 
the flow of interminable bayonets, guns, and 
sabres and late that night I fell asleep in an 
Imperial metropolis wild with joy of conquest 
and shouting itself hoarse with Die Wacht am 
Rhein. Yet this was merely the normal garrison 
of this' one city which at that time had no better 
water supply than corner pumps, and no moie 
complicated sewerage than the street gutters 
leading into the Spree. But war throws glamour 
over civil affairs; and in the imanimous ovation 

142 



French Indemnity 143 

of which Kaiser Wilhelm was the object, it would 
have taken keen eyes to note that in the cheering 
crowd was a large proportion of citizens who while 
they forgave much for the sake of the French 
milliards yet grudged France the liberty of which 
they were themselves deprived. France paid off 
the indemnity within two years, to the amazement 
of her conquerors; she also exhibited to an aston- 
ished world an example of self-control and national 
dignity that was the more striking for coming on 
the heels of an administration half -priest and half- 
Caesar. 

The speculative historian would gladly have re- 
corded the abdication of Wilhelm on June i6, 
1 87 1, at the moment when his life work had been 
done; the spoliation of France accomplished and 
an Imperial German army restored to the united 
Fatherland. Frederick William, his eldest son, 
was now forty years of age, endeared to the army 
by his interest in soldier welfare and to the people 
even more so because of his known attachment to 
constitutional liberty as opposed to merely mili- 
tary autocracy. But the speculative historian 
is listened to impatiently and we shall have yet 
seventeen more years of the Greise Kaiser — years 
filled with bitterness and Bismarckian failure. 
By the time death opens a way for Frederick III. 



144 Prussianism and Pacifism 

to ascend the throne he will do so only as a very- 
sick man — nearly sixty years of age — a man who 
has been deliberately kept away from active pub- 
lic life, because suspected of opinions which the 
Yunkers call heresy but which we consider to be 
conservative. 

Wilhelm, like Bismarck, had nothing of the 
magnanimous in his nature, however much both 
of them cultivated that reputation throughout 
the provinces. At the Versailles coronation, not 
Germany, but Prussia, was symbolized, by the 
soldier dress of the Hohenzollern and by the regi- 
mental banners about him. How little enthusiasm 
for him there was in Bavaria may be gathered 
from the fact that it was not until three days 
after the Versailles proclamation, that the Bavarian 
Congress concluded to recognize the Prussian 
pretensions ; and this conclusion was reached only 
after ten days of violent debate and by a vote 
of 102 to 48. But Wilhelm almost hoped that 
Bavaria and others would secede from the Con- 
federation; in which case he could easily conquer 
by the sword what negotiation had failed to 
accomplish. 

Berlin is a bad capital for Germany geographi- 
cally, ethnologically, and politically. Leipzig or 
Weimar has higher claims on each of these 



Capital of Germany 145 

grounds; but the sword has decided, and the 
whole weight of Bismarckian influence has gone 
to make BerUn an artificial metropolis. Prussian 
methods are military and therefore we find in 
Berlin the reflection of that infinitely careful de- 
tail that has made the German army the model 
for all others and the German capital worthy of so 
perfect an army. The provincial Prussian capital, 
which had little more than half a million when I 
knew it first, has grown like a Johannesburg or 
Chicago ; but its growth is like that of the German 
navy, the product of hothouse conditions. The 
new Germany forced all roads to centre in Berlin; 
and all administrative bureaus were gradually 
concentrated here. It was the policy of Bismarck 
to compel all who sought public employment to 
frequent his capital, if not his antechamber; and 
even the tourist public discovered that wherever 
in Germany they might wish to travel, all trains, 
or at least all good ones, compelled a halt in the 
Wilhelmstrasse . 

The new Empire controlled not merely a Prussia 
much enlarged, but claimed exclusive control of 
the conquered French provinces, of the new Ger- 
man navy, and of the monster colonial empire 
that was about to develop. Aside from the large 
permanent garrisons of Berlin, Spandau, and Pots- 



146 Prussianism and Pacifism 

dam, officers from all over were called to the new 
capital on general staff duty or for examination. 
Museums, professional schools, churches, monu- 
ments, barracks, these increased as did the open- 
ing of new streets and all the concomitants of an 
efficiently administered city. Sewage farms were 
laid out in the sandy suburbs, the waters of Spree 
and Havel were kept free from pollution, an excel- 
lent water supply was furnished in abundance, 
paving, lighting, and sewerage all became models 
to other cities, and municipal markets at many 
convenient points enabled the farmers to bring 
their produce direct to the hausfrau and thus make 
this capital no less remarkable for political effi- 
ciency than for low cost of living. Comparisons 
are rarely pleasant to both but candour compels 
me to make my statement clear by saying that 
one who knows the administration of Berlin enters 
New York with the same disgust that one of us 
might feel on first encountering the sanitary dis- 
positions of Canton or the Bagdad of pre-British 
days. 

Yet" Berlin was not satisfied. She built monu- 
ment after monument and barrack after barrack, 
but the great world persisted in preferring the 
capital of spoliated France to the parvenu atmos- 
phere that blew through the Linden to the King's 



A Pious Kaiser 147 

palace. We youngsters of 1870 were not specu- 
lative philosophers and we rushed frantically to 
honour the heroes of the moment, to make our 
bows before the scholarly Moltke, when we were 
so fortunate as to meet him as he strolled to or 
from the General Staff Building. He always re- 
turned our salutes with kindly gravity and we 
felt proud at having had so great a God to 
worship. 

We did not know then that there were others 
in Germany besides those in uniform; much less 
did we know that there was a social excommuni- 
cation pronounced by the Prussian All Highest 
against those who were so reckless as to think for 
themselves in matters political. We of the un- 
thinking world saw only soldiers and cheering 
mobs and a patriarchal Kaiser who said he loved 
his people and who fell upon his knees and burst 
into tears and sought divine guidance and wrestled 
inwardly like another Augustine of Hippo Regius. 
We have of this venerable Kaiser biographies with- 
out number and they are mainly panegyrics as of 
some national demi-god whom it would be sac- 
rilegious to approach save as a worshipper. We 
have worn out much of our eyesight in the search 
after the truth regarding this period, and from this 
effort we rise as from thumbing an orthodox 



148 Prussianism and Pacifism 

catalogue of Roman saints, more bewildered than 
edified. 

If Berlin is the dullest capital in Europe, we 
must admit that it has been made in the image of 
Wilhelm to whom God's landscape appeals prima- 
rily as a field of military manoeuvre. Berlin had 
no interest to him save as the headquarters of an 
army, where he dispatched a great deal of routine 
work. The matter of municipal adornment left 
him cold, but he saw to it that the strategic points 
of the city were so disposed that his troops could 
readily command all approaches to the palace and 
sweep away any mob by a timely application of 
grapeshot. Of his ninety-one years of life, more 
than eighty had been spent in the uniform of a 
Prussian guardsman, and I doubt if he had ever 
met a dozen civilians to whom he would have given 
the title of gentleman. In BerHn he recognized 
only Prussian officers as fit for court society, and 
if he made an exception under pressure from his 
wife it was well understood that such exception 
should never be treated as a precedent. 

Bismarck, after the Treaty of Frankfort, ap- 
peared to the outside world as having reached a 
level little below divinity, yet in the eyes of Wil- 
helm he had achieved but secondary honours so 
long as these were hmited to decorations, titles, 



Bismarck Made General 149 

and emoluments to which any civihan might as- 
pire. The culmination of earthly glory to the Iron 
Chancellor came when late in life the Emperor 
finally conferred upon him the titular rank of 
*' Prussian General." Hitherto, he had always 
worn the uniform of a militia or reserve officer, 
but now he was to be admitted as knight of the 
Kaiser's round table, to be a real Prussian paladin, 
not a mere prince or statesman. We must imagine 
a Cobden, or a Bright, or a Gladstone compelled 
in his old age to exchange the toga for a cuirass, 
and address the forum with a sword clattering 
at his heels. And we must go a step farther 
and learn that Wilhelm was not joking when he 
dubbed Bismarck a general nor did the Iron 
Chancellor flinch when his master said to him: 
"All your past honours are trifling compared with 
the one which I am now about to accord you." 

The dulness of the Berlin court is the dulness 
of any barrack room society, particularly a society 
where woman plays a subordinate role and the 
men are all of the same mind. It is not merely 
Frenchmen who glorify their Paris, or Britons 
who browse lovingly about Fleet Street and Chel- 
sea. All the world goes gladly to places where 
great men have been appreciated and great 
thoughts encouraged; the Quai Voltaire appeals 



150 Prussianism and Pacifism 

to the scholar of every clime with a force little 
less than Paternoster Row or Westminster. Berlin 
has straighter avenues than either Paris or London 
— we may admit, also, that she has more monu- 
ments. But her triumph is in the quantity rather 
than in the quality of the wares that she offers; 
and, after admiring many miles of the Spree city, 
we regret that it is not interesting. In my young- 
ster days Berlin was congested with statues of 
Prussian kings and military heroes and allegorical 
figures symbolizing warlike triumph. But there 
were scarce any monuments for the great writers, 
reformers, and thinkers. Wilhelm saw no good in 
such men; he knew but one kind of great man — 
the soldier who had shot down enemies of mon- 
archy. Unfortunately nearly every German whom 
the world held to be great had at some time been 
treated as an enemy to the monarch; for to think 
independently is frequently high treason in Berlin. 
The Age of Wilhelm is the Golden Age of Ger- 
man scholarship, art, and music, but he never 
knew it save as a period of blood and iron and 
rebellious agitation. Schiller waited long for a 
monument in Berlin; but Schiller to Wilhelm 
was like a Luther to Madrid. Schiller had sung 
of William Tell and liberty and for that had been 
ostracized by all governments friendly to the Holy 



William Tell 151 

Alliance. When, therefore, the citizens of Berlin 
clamoured for a monument to their great poet, 
Wilhelm saw in this a revival of revolutionary- 
disturbance. He declined to countenance by his 
presence the unveiling of so obnoxious a person; 
he would not permit that effigy to be exposed at 
a point where he would have to see it on his daily 
drive. Whether Wilhelm ever read a play of the 
great dramatist I know not, but when he was 
approached on the subject of honouring the un- 
veiling with his presence he answered with scorch- 
ing finality: "Schiller — Schiller — is there such a 
name amongst my officers!" 



CHAPTER XXIII 

War between Pius IX. and Wilhelm I. — CEcumenical 
Council of 1870 — Its Effect in Germany 

C HORTLY after the triumphant entry of Wil- 
helm I. into the new capital of united Ger- 
many, Victor Emmanuel made an entry vastly 
more impressive into the ancient capital of Italy. 
For centuries Rome had been ruled by a corpora- 
tion of celibate priests who had finally succeeded 
in making the papal states a byword for corruption 
amongst officials and brigandage on the highways. 
The new Italy demanded its ancient capital and 
her army lost no time in taking possession. Victor 
Emmanuel was hailed as liberator by those who had 
fought under Mazzini and Garibaldi, and cursed 
or excommunicated by Pius IX. from his Vatican 
retreat. 

During the past three German wars there had 
been no time for anything but the thunder of 
artillery made by Krupp. In 1871, however, 
the thunders made in the Vatican rumbled over 

152 



Syllabus 153 

the face of the waters and raised echoes in every 
hamlet where CathoHcs asked themselves whether 
it was better to be a good citizen or a dutiful 
Romanist. Wilhelm was an autocrat by practice 
and conviction. He thought well of papal auto- 
cracy because in the alleged successor of Peter he 
recognized a monarch who was generally opposed 
to socialism, democracy, and most forms of popu- 
lar initiative. Wilhelm, however, hotly resented 
any meddling with his German subjects and when 
Pius IX. launched his so-called Syllabus in 1864, 
and then followed it up by a blasphemous claim 
to infallibility (1870), the Grand Lama of Luther- 
anism scented the enemy and acted accordingly 
with characteristic directness. He gave notice 
that henceforth all teachers of religion, morals, 
or the alphabet, must swear allegiance to the head 
of the state; they must be subject to the law of 
the land; Prussia would tolerate no priests who 
were followers of two flags; they must choose 
between that of Pope or Kaiser. This is only 
one manifestation of the eternal conflict between 
Church and State. Republican France had to 
undergo a long and painful struggle before she 
asserted the right of her people to free schools 
untainted by alien or papal direction. Italy 
has also had to incur papal anathema in her 



154 Prussianism and Pacifism 

struggle for liberty of conscience; and the new 
states of Bohemia and Poland have yet that fight 
before them. 

Yet Pius IX. ascended the papal throne (1846) 
acclaimed like Napoleon III. as a reformer and 
friend of liberty ! But this momentary popularity 
was soon exchanged for the character of a theo- 
cratic monarch which he retained to the close 
of his eighty-six years. Both Wilhelm and Pius 
were embittered in 1848, for each had been forced 
to fly from his own people amid groans and hisses 
— in Berlin the mob was Lutheran, in Rome it 
was Catholic — otherwise things were much the 
same. Pius, like Wilhelm, had been crossed in 
love and each had soldierly ambition; although 
the military ardour of the Italian was checked by 
the medical board who found him unfit because of 
epilepsy. When we consider, however, the notable 
proportion of illustrious conquerors who have 
been marked by this infirmity it would seem as 
though this alone would make us expect in Pius 
a career out of the ordinary. Nor are we disap- 
pointed. Like most men of abnormal if not 
morbid mentality, Pius early became conscious 
of miraculous assistance in material affairs. He 
had been much relieved if not cured by some 
priest who made an incantation over him accom- 



CEcumenical Council 155 

panied by the laying on of hands; and later, on a 
journey to South America, he recorded some super- 
natural interposition that saved his life. Need 
we wonder then that he later caused the sanctifica- 
tion of the anaemic and hysterical girl who made 
I>ourdes famous by her several interviews with 
the mother of God! 

Most people have heard vaguely of the so-called 
Kulturkampf, which followed so closely on the 
heels of the Imperial coronation at Versailles as 
to appear almost a part of it. This was a three- 
cornered war, in which Pius attacked not merely 
the Lutheran heretics embodied in Wilhelm, but 
those German Catholics who deprecated the ex- 
aggeration of papal autocracy. During the sum- 
mer of the Franco-German War Pius collected in 
Rome some seven hundred theologians whom 
he crowded into a building famed for its bad 
acoustic properties. The summer was exception- 
ally hot and in 1870 the Holy City was conspicu- 
ous as a breeder of disease. The final vote was 
taken on July i8th, almost coinciding with the 
opening of the war by Eugenie against heretical 
Wilhelm. The council had commenced with 754 
delegates, but only 534 answered to their names 
at the deciding roll-call. Here was a defection of 
two hundred, who under various pretexts found it 



156 Prussianism and Pacifism 

more convenient to return home on the plea of 
health than record themselves in opposition to a 
measure which their Pope warmly advocated. Of 
those whose opinions are thus in doubt we must 
exclude seventeen who died during the discussion 
— they were no doubt envied by many! If we 
seek to analyse the vote by which infallibility 
was added to the Pope's many other titles, we find 
that of the three hundred and sixty-two (362) 
bishops who voted for Pius, 170 were Italians; 
and of these 170, 143 came from the papal states 
alone. It was well for Pius that his council hap- 
pened in a peculiarly hot summer, of a peculiarly 
unhealthy city, on seats from which it was difficult 
to hear anything that was said. Had the debates 
been dragged on for a few weeks longer, the entry 
of the Italian army (September 20th) would have 
made a wholesome diversion, especially for the 
many who might have taken courage when they 
realized that free and united Italy was about to 
absorb all the temporal kingdom hitherto claimed 
by the popes. We must consider also that in 
the majority of this infallibility council or con- 
vention were one hundred apostolic vicars depend- 
ent on the Pope for preferment, and many heads 
of religious orders, to say nothing of archbishops 
and cardinals who were more popish than the 



Infallibility i57 

Pope. The minority who dared to oppose the 
proposed papal claim to infallibility found them- 
selves in a council where papal influence was pre- 
ordained if riot prearranged; and even had this 
not been the case the conditions of debate were 
intolerable save to those who clamoured only for 
a show of hands. Of the minority, fifty-three 
united in a formal protest ; of whom it is interesting 
to note that twenty- two, even then, were French; 
and twenty-one German, Austrian, or Hungarian. 
These returned to their several homes before the 
final vote, as did most of the thoughtful minority. 

And thus was achieved the crowning earthly 
triumph of Pius IX. While his most Catholic 
Empress Eugenie was fanatically urging her hus- 
band on in his crusade against the northern here- 
tics, her beloved Pope, confident of his powers and 
with infinite faith in the credulity of his illiterate 
millions, framed a decree of infallibility that has 
divided pious Catholics as nothing before since 
the days of Martin Luther. 

But let us digress one moment on the Syllabus, 
so called. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

The Syllabus of 1864 and its Effect on Wilhelm I.— 

A Drawn Battle between Infallibility and 

Invincibility 

'\ A 7ILHELM was no less an autocrat than Pius 
^ * IX. in matters theological; the main dif- 
ference being that the Prussian kept within the 
boundaries fixed by the Treaty of Frankfort where- 
as the Roman claimed as much sovereignty in 
Germany as in China, Peru, or the papal states. 
Wilhelm ruled his Lutheran clergy after the man- 
ner of an enlightened and frequently benevolent 
despot. He saw to it that they all received an 
excellent education; for to him it was the school- 
master that made his army invincible. But school- 
master and clergyman, administrator and soldier, 
all equally felt the encircling pressure of an all 
highest power that said to them : ' ' Your way must 
be my way or woe be to you!" 

And Prussia in general accepted that way as 
the best one for them; for it was the way of the 

158 



German Catholics 159 

soldier and all other ways led to discussion and 
dissension, riot and revolution. For these reasons 
Wilhelm took no interest in the various efforts 
of his German Catholics to found independent 
congregations. He could understand an autocrat 
Pope or an autocrat Czar of the Greek Church or 
a Grand Lama of Tibet, but he saw only political 
and social chaos in a multitude of independent 
religions — all claiming to be Christian, all claim- 
ing the right of conscience, and all indulging in 
the dangerous privilege of preaching a gospel that 
had little in common with views of a Berlin police- 
man — still less with those of a Roman Pope. 

Had the Hohenzollerns shown half the interest 
in the spiritual welfare of Prussia that they did in 
the casting of cannon or the construction of rail- 
ways, there would today be in Germany as in 
France, a strong national church, loyal to the 
government, yet free to develop along lines of 
modern ideals. There was a wholesome stir in 
Germany when the Roman Bishop of Treves 
(1844) exploited for gain the alleged seamless coat 
of our Saviour. The scandal was so great that 
many Catholics protested and founded independ- 
ent congregations; professing the faith of their 
fathers, but rejecting the new papal abuses. The 
Prussian Government feared that these dissenting 



i6o Prussianism and Pacifism 

communities might be nurseries of liberal ideas, 
particulariy after the Revolution (1848); and, 
while they did not apply the rack and stake to 
these protesting Catholics (Altkatholik) , the police 
placed so many obstructions in their way that 
they had but a slow and feeble growth. The 
movement received a new impulse by the infalli- 
bility decree and is destined to develop into na- 
tional proportions by reason of the Great War 
that has witnessed a Pope, a Sultan, and Kaiser 
leagued amicably for the suppression of democracy 
throughout the world. 

The scandal produced by the commercial exploita- 
tion of the Treves coat was perhaps heightened 
by the existence of a French rival at Argen- 
teuil near Versailles. Pious legend pretended 
that this one had been worked by the Virgin 
Mary's own hands and had in consequence per- 
formed miracles innumerable. The mere fact of 
there being two seamless coats operating within 
contiguous territory and each certified apostoli- 
cally as genuine does not appear to have been a 
serious objection in the eyes of the devout — least 
of all to Gregory XVI., who preceded Pius IX. 
in the pontifical office. 

But let us return to that strange Syllabus (1864). 
It is a word of Greek origin used by the Vatican 



Holy Coat of Treves i6i 

to mean a collection or recapitulation of those 
papal commandments which an orthodox Roman 
Catholic must believe and practise and fight for 
with mouth or musket; otherwise he will incur 
excommunication in this world and, in the next, 
endless torment. These commandments are eight 
in number and they are in full force today in 
every Roman Catholic church throughout this 
land of free schools. 

In 1864 America was in the agonies of her great 
Civil War and Europe was more interested in 
Wilhelm's rape of Denmark than in pronuncia- 
mentos from Rome. Yet in spite of these distrac- 
tions, so violent was the effect that in such Catholic 
countries as Austria, France, Portugal, and Italy, 
the governments forbade its official publication. 
In Naples it was burned by the hangman. Yet it 
was merely a circular letter of a Roman pope to 
a few hundred bishops of his Church telling them 
what they must believe and what abjure. 

The eightieth one perhaps covers ground enough 
to spare us further discussion of this curious docu- 
ment for in it the Pontiff states that the good 
Romanist must hold himself aloof from so-called 
liberal ideas, progress, and modern civilization. 
This was Rome's reply to the waves of religious 
inquiry that had been started twenty years before 



1 62 Prussianism and Pacifism 

at the time of the Holy Coat scandal. The imme- 
diate provocation had been a conference of Catho- 
lic bishops who had ventured to discuss at Malines 
(in Belgium) whether it was not possible for good 
Catholics to be also good citizens and march 
harmoniously with modern society. The answer 
of the Pope was a flat NO! — and moreover he left 
little room for doubt on any material point. There 
is scarcely any institution or practice which we 
regard as essential to civil liberty or self-govern- 
ment that is not condemned by the Syllabus. To 
summarize briefly: 

God having revealed all things to His Church, 
there can be no progress made by human reason 
— miracles are the safer guide. Natural philo- 
sophy is but a snare unless linked with the super- 
natural. No man should be allowed to select for 
himself in matters of religion — his reason is but a 
poor guide. All forms of socialism, communism, 
secret societies, Bible societies, liberal societies, 
— they are all moral pests and must be eradicated. 
The Church has her rights from Heaven and 
these make her independent of human laws. No 
state must therefore presume to limit the powers 
of the Church. The priest must not ask permis- 
sion of any state official — he needs not the assent 
of any civil authority. The Church is justified 



Holy Coat of Treves 163 

in using force when her pretensions are denied. 
Priests are not subject to the state — they must not 
be called to do military service. The laws of a 
country cannot be regarded as more important 
than those sanctioned by a Pope. No state may 
in any way interfere with the utterances of the 
Catholic priesthood. Public schools should be 
under the control of the priests and indeed higher 
education should not be permitted unless in har- 
mony with papal doctrines. There should be no 
separation of Church and State. The state has 
no right to grant a divorce and no marriage is 
valid unless performed by a priest — the civil power 
has no right to declare a marriage valid. The 
Roman Catholic faith should be made the state 
religion everywhere to the exclusion of every other. 
It is wrong for Catholic states to permit Protest- 
ants to exercise their faith; this alleged tolerance 
enables heretics to openly discuss religion and 
thus to disturb the minds of Catholics; the result 
of such tolerance is to corrupt the spirit and finally 
produce indifference. 

If now there is any truth dear to a free people 
that is not condemned in this fulmination of 
1864, let me refer the curious to any non-Roman 
library where he may peruse the unexpurgated 
text in the original Latin or its many translations. 



1 64 Prussianism and Pacifism 

We of the self-governing British tradition smiled 
at the Syllabus as did the lawmakers of Westmin- 
ster, Ottawa, and Melbourne. We are of the sub- 
lime conceit that time and a dose of democracy- 
can cure every complaint — for we are children 
in theological statecraft. 

But Wilhelm had a different theory of man; 
and when Bismarck pointed out to him that there 
were Germans — nay Prussians — who might cease 
to be subject to his will the moment they gradu- 
ated from a Roman Catholic seminary, then were 
heard rumblings of Thor and Wotan defying the 
apostolic Monsignori to do their worst. 

The Syllabus of 1864 was merely the round 
writing of a dean in a college of bishops. It was 
received by the majority of Catholics in obsequious 
resignation, for the majority knows not how to 
think or has learned that thinking is more danger- 
ous than silence. The minority of patriotic and 
farsighted priests protested, not at the opinion 
of their chief but at the mistake of making them 
public in so uncompromising a form. 

There are those whom opposition sobers. Pius 
was not of these. On the contrary the almost 
unanimous protest of those whose characters he 
should have respected decided him to make 
the Syllabus more odious. In consequence, the 



The Pope's Challenge Accepted 165 

(Ecumenical Council (so-called) met in Rome; the 
substance of the Syllabus was adopted and its 
author raised to the rank of an infallible. 

CEcumenical is the name given to this council 
by the Vatican, but it was so only in name, for 
its members were of the Roman Catholic sect 
alone ; none came from the great Eastern Orthodox 
Church, whose popes in Greece, Rumania, Bulga- 
ria, and throughout the vast Russian Empire, claim 
for the throne of Constantine a sanctity in apos- 
tolic succession fully equal if not superior to that 
which any Roman bishop can maintain. We 
might go even further and allege that this council 
of 1870 did not represent the Roman Catholic 
people who in primitive times had a voice in the 
selection of their spiritual chiefs. 

In Germany Bismarck lost no time in accepting 
the Pope's challenge. He called upon the new 
Reichstag for the necessary laws and soon there- 
after (1873) word was sent to his theocratic majesty 
of Rome that he could no longer do business in 
Germany unless he swallowed the Syllabus hoof 
and hides, so far as Catholics in the Fatherland 
were concerned; and there were many millions 
in Bavaria, the Rhine, and Polish provinces. WH- 
helm the Invincible and Pius the Infallible locked 
horns over the Syllabus for a decade. In the end 



1 66 Prussianism and Pacifism 

Pius discovered that Catholic propaganda can be 
conducted in a democracy far more easily than in 
a land governed on his own principles — perhaps 
he was consoled for his failures on the Rhine by 
successes on the Hudson, to say nothing of Eng- 
land and her colonies. Bismarck did for Germany 
what we have not yet dared do here. He insisted 
that every priest, no matter what his church, 
must recognize the law and the flag of the govern- 
ment under which he lives; all corporations, re- 
ligious, or lay, must be under government control 
or inspection; no alien sovereign, pope, khalif, or 
lama, shall issue orders within our borders — and 
much to the same effect. Bismarck was right in 
principle, but brutal in his methods. He merely 
anticipated the laws which the French Republic 
was compelled (1894) to adopt in order to protect 
herself from Jesuit education in her schools and 
papal propaganda from the pulpit. But where 
France after a wholesome internal struggle com- 
pletely vindicated her right to a national and 
patriotic church, Prussia had to compromise, 
because she was an autocracy; because her Pro- 
testants had been drilled into mere machines; 
because all the elements of free congregational 
worship had been suppressed and finally because 
the bulk of German Catholics had not in the past 



The Pope's Challenge Accepted 167 

learned to expect from Berlin any more political 
tolerance than from the Vatican. Neither Pius 
IX. nor Wilhelm gained much by the KuUurkampf 
— yet the world was the better for a struggle in 
which, if infallibility proved inffectual, the same 
could be said of that invincibility which for the 
first time in Wilhelm's reign ceased to work as in 
former wars. 



CHAPTER XXV 

The Abduction of Edgar Mortara — Activity of Pius 
IX. in America and England 

'\\7E must regretfully admit that the doings of 
despots, theocrats, and conquerors interest 
the human kind vastly more than the debates of 
legislative reformers or the report of a budget 
commission. Thousands will read of a Cromwell, 
a Gustavus Adolphus, or a Napoleon to one who 
would care for the Lives of the Lord Chancellors. 
Let us then, before we dismiss political theocracy 
entirely from this little study of two Wilhelms, 
consider the Pope Pius as a force in aid of militar- 
ism in Germany. The religious war inaugurated 
by the Syllabus of 1864 and inflamed by the edict 
of infallibility in 1870 ended only with the death 
of its author at the age of eighty-five. The next 
pope seized the first opportunity of meeting Wil- 
helm half-way, and between them it was concluded 
that their common enemy was the growing menace 
of democracy or socialism; and that, for the pre- 

168 



Peace with Rome 169 

sent at least, they should lay aside the quarrel 
over things theological in order to first guarantee 
the stability each of his own throne. 

Prussian and papal autocracy between 1848 
and 191 8 is doubly interesting if we recall that its 
growth was an appeal to force on the one side and 
illiteracy or emotional hysteria on the other. Also 
note that the recrudescence of papal pretension 
was never more conspicuous than in those years 
when modern science was raising new hope for op- 
pressed humanity and when the names of Cobden 
and Bright, Huxley and Darwin, Dickens and 
Thackeray, David Livingstone and Abraham Lin- 
coln appeared to symbolize a new world in which 
free schools and free speech would banish from 
the world the last lingering remnants of slavery 
— physical or spiritual. 

Pius IX. commenced his reign (1846) amid 
popular plaudits, but when Mazzini proclaimed 
the republic under his very Vatican, and upset 
his rule in the papal states, he escaped in disguise 
as did many other autocrats of that day and re- 
turned only when the bayonets of a very Catholic 
French Government gave their protection, which 
was in 1849. 

Next year he re-established a papal hierarchy 
in the Protestant land of Queen Victoria; and 



170 Prussianism and Pacifism 

thus gave official notice to his faithful that the 
British Empire should henceforth be regarded 
as a field for their missionary enterprise. It may 
be noted in parenthesis that this Anglican conces- 
sion, so far from earning the gratitude of the 
papacy or conciliating Catholic Ireland has failed 
conspicuously in both respects. 

Next year Spain agreed that only the Catho- 
lic religion should be recognized; and similar tri- 
umphs were scored throughout South and Central 
American states. In 1855 Franz Josef of Austria 
handed over his educational institutions to Jesuit 
control — a triumph for the papacy but a disaster 
for her dupe on the Danube. 

In my youth the free press of both continents 
voiced an indignant protest over the kidnapping 
(1858) by priests of a child belonging to a Jewish 
family in Bologna. The church of course claimed 
that it was doing a pious (if not a legal) act by 
abducting this burning brand from a Hebrew 
flame; but the parents thought otherwise and 
loudly clamoured for the return of their offspring. 
Pius, however, saw no good reason for depriving 
the true Church of another convert; on the con- 
trary, he was delighted to learn of a Jew child 
being baptized; and, when claims were pressed 
by legal means, he simply replied that these were 



Edgar Mortara 171 

matters of spiritual concern and therefore beyond 
the jurisdiction of temporal judges and sheriffs. 
In Chinese ports, I found that the baptizing of 
foundlings was a favourite, because inexpensive, 
method of swelling the list of alleged conversions 
from Buddhism to Christianity; but as these 
foundlings were gathered mainly from city slums 
or sailor resorts there were few complaints on the 
score of abduction. Yet even in the Far East 
there are perpetual repetitions of this same tale; 
and, when a mission station is raided by the mob, 
it is often done because the people believe that 
some child has been abducted as was little Edgar 
Mortara of Bologna. 

England, France, Prussia, each in turn made 
representations to Pius, who only shrugged his 
shoulders and smilingly replied: "What are you 
going to do about it?" In Austria the press was 
forbidden to speak of the matter in any form, 
and good Catholics defended this rape by claiming 
that it was sanctioned by laws of long ago. The 
Jewish family attempted to arrest the Roman 
Catholic nurse who had conspired with the priests 
in this abduction, but she also had been put under 
safe-keeping in a convent, and no one knew her 
whereabouts save her clerical keepers. Mean- 
while little Edgar grew to be a lad of twelve 



172 Prussianism and Pacifism 

knowing nothing but Roman ritual, and the Pope 
then offered to restore him to his parents if they 
would abjure their faith! Luckily the year 1870 
intervened and with it was swept away all papal 
jurisdiction in matters temporal, and so ends 
for us this remarkable case of abduction. 

The year of papal infallibility saw the most 
learned and the most courageous of the Roman 
clergy protest against a policy in Rome which 
they regarded as unwise — not to say illegal — 
from a Catholic point of view. Doellinger in 
Bavaria and Hyacinthe Loyson in Paris cheerfully 
faced excommunication and helped to found free 
churches that were Catholic and Episcopal, yet 
free from the many innovations that had provoked 
the reformation of the sixteenth century and the 
scepticism of the nineteenth. In Bohemia, Hun- 
gary, Austria, Prussia, Italy, and more particularly 
in Switzerland, Catholics broke away from papal 
control and sought religious comfort in churches 
more consonant with the simplicity of apostolic 
times. In America the movement has taken firm 
root, especially amongst those of Slav and Latin 
blood whose compatriots have been fighting for 
freedom in this great war whilst Catholic Irish 
have invited the common enemy to land in their 
midst, capture Dublin, and establish Home Rule 



Home Rule i73 

by the aid of Prussian bayonets. The people of 
Italy, Bohemia, Poland, and Croatia do not relish 
a religion, many of whose most important priests 
appear to be inspired more by anti-English fervour 
than zeal for liberty. The Irish church in New 
York has been conspicuously hostile to the institu- 
tions most necessary to a free people; and never 
more so than after the Syllabus and Infallibility 
Council of Pius IX. This church today makes in 
free America the same pretensions that provoked 
the secession of her ablest prelates in 1870. Rome 
has chosen America for her next battle ground, and 
here she has absorbed much land on which she 
has built many so-called religious houses that are 
exempt from taxation and governed by laws made 
in a foreign country and by priests who owe alle- 
giance primarily to a foreign autocrat. Had Edgar 
Mortara or his abductors been spirited away to 
any one of the many asylums conducted by the 
Roman Church in America, would he have been 
any less closely and securely guarded than in the 
papal states of Pius? 



CHAPTER XXVI 

Bismarck's Persecution of Count Arnim and George 
von Bunsen 

XliJlLHELM and Bismarck were so much of 
' ' one flesh between 1862 and 1888, the 
years of their partnership, that we may use these 
names almost as interchangeable. The Emperor 
was perhaps happy that he had in his chancellor 
one who never hesitated at any methods however 
crude when it was question of removing or crush- 
ing an inconvenient opponent. The Kaiser con- 
sented to this brutality or it could not have been 
exercised; but the people at large adored their 
venerable Wilhelm while they trembled at the 
name of his chief minister. 

Bismarck's brutality was applauded by the bulk 
of Germany so long as his victims were French- 
men. But after the Treaty of Frankfort (1871) 
that same brutality so crushingly inflicted upon 
Favre and Thiers now found a scope even more 
free within the borders of the new Fatherland. 

174 



Qualities of Count Arnim i75 

His first conspicuous victim was a German 
remarkable for liberal sentiment and statesman- 
like vision; worthy descendant of an illustrious 
line, and so successful in affairs demanding firm- 
ness and tact combined, that Wilhelm selected 
him as the first to inaugurate diplomatic relations 
between his new Empire and the Republic of 
France. Diplomacy has ever been the weakest 
feature of a government which employs force as 
its main weapon; and therefore is it the more 
notable that in such a juncture Prussia should 
have produced an ambassador combining high 
breeding, knowledge of the world, and tactful 
sympathy. I refer to Count Harry Arnim. Of 
course Paris was pleased. After a Bismarck, 
what Prussian would not have been acceptable! 
But Arnim had qualities which the Iron Chancel- 
lor could not forgive; he enjoyed the favour of 
his Emperor ; he was becoming friendly to French- 
men and he was even presuming to offer advice to 
a Bismarck ! Unfortunately he gave good advice ; 
and this was unpardonable. For in spite of popu- 
lar legend, it is mainly the soldier who thinks of 
Bismarck as the great diplomat; while the great 
ambassadors politely refer to the Iron Chancellor 
as an excellent soldier. If we needed proof it 
might be found in the fact that so long as he 



176 Prussianism and Pacifism 

negotiated with superior battalions at his back, his 
diplomacy was proportionally successful, but after 
the Treaty of Frankfort he entered upon a period 
of mortifying compromises in spite of methods no 
less brutal. 

Arnim had spent many years in Rome as agent 
of his King and wisely warned Bismarck in time 
regarding the trouble which Pius was brewing by 
his proposed oecumenical council. He urged that 
Prussia be represented in these deliberations. He 
also foresaw the coming war between autocracy 
and theocracy and urged Bismarck to facilitate 
the forming of Catholic congregations, indepen- 
dent of papal control in the spirit of Ronge and 
Doellinger, But Bismarck rejected all this as 
an impertinence, though he may have had secret 
regret when on the death of Pius IX. (1878) he 
looked upon the scars which that so-called Kultur- 
kampf had left upon his sword. We may never 
know the true reasons that urged Bismarck to 
disgrace Arnim but we shall not be far out if we 
realize that, next to brutality, the Chancellor's 
most 'conspicuous quality was jealousy, touching 
his prerogatives. In Arnim he detected a possible 
rival, if not successor; and, consequently his de- 
struction was planned and swiftly consummated. 
It is always easy for a Bismarck to find the pretext 



Dismissal of Arnim i77 

when a victim is to be sacrificed; and in this case 
the loose charge of treason was appHed much as 
the correspondingly indefinite cry of heresy sufficed 
to destroy an inconvenient individual during the 
heyday of the Inquisition. 

In 1874 Arnim was suddenly dismissed from 
his post in Paris and made the object of a criminal 
prosecution, which could not end well for the 
criminal, since Bismarck made the charge. So 
Arnim was disgraced, and condemned to three 
months in jail. The people knew nothing of the 
merits in this case, for, of course, the Chancellor 
flooded the subservient press with articles making 
out that Arnim had acted disloyally to his King 
— even if he had not committed overt acts of 
treason. The pious Wilhelm had to choose be- 
tween Arnim and his masterful Chancellor and of 
course Arnim fell. He ventured to appeal his 
case to a higher court, but so far from getting ac- 
quittal, his term of prison was increased from three 
to nine months. Fortunately" for himself, he 
escaped to Switzerland whence he published 
anonymously a defence of his conduct. The 
angry Chancellor regarded this as more than 
treason ; it needed a new name : Bismarckheleidigung; 
and Arnim was promptly condemned (in his 
absence), to five years of penal servitude. His 



178 Prussianism and Pacifism 

family made repeated efforts to have him re- 
habilitated by a fair trial but they did not suc- 
ceed until just before his death (1881). He died a 
victim of Bismarckian vengeance — his heart was 
broken. Had he been born on the banks of the 
Ganges he would have smiled seraphically, whilst 
receiving the lashes of a tyrant, for he would have 
repeated the ineffable word that was in the be- 
ginning of time; and he would have rejoiced in 
acquiring merit for a prospective reincarnation. 
But not being a Brahmin, he cursed the brute who 
lashed him whilst all good Yunkers praised Bis- 
marck for making an example that would stimulate 
loyalty in the rising generation of diplomatic 
servants. 

The Arnim case was conducted on the principle 
which animated the Prussians in Belgium — Schreck- 
lichkeit or "f rightfulness." It is the same primum 
mobile that made Louis XIV. quarter the most 
licentious of his dragoons upon his Protestant 
subjects and thus hasten the day when all in 
France would be of one faith. Bismarck succeeded 
in the Arnim case, if success is measured by the 
proportion of public servants whose idea of duty 
is to play the flunkey to the one above and be a 
bully to those below. It was he who prepared 
the chaos of present Germany by persecuting in 



Dragonnade in Prussia i79 

his day the small but precious minority of learned 
and courageous representatives who were slowly 
educating the people to the evils of socialism on 
the one side and the no less menacing danger of 
exaggerated protectionism and militarism on the 

other. 

Throughout the duel between Pope and Kaiser, 
Bismarck maintained himself in the Reichstag 
by the support of a liberal majority who resented 
the idea of an aHen potentate meddling with 
German education. This majority was equally 
helpful in counterbalancing the SociaHst vote which 
was growing ominously in importance. Suddenly 
(1879), however, the great Chancellor decided to 
abandon the traditional policy of Prussia in the 
matter of a very moderate tariff, and to inaugurate 
a commercial era of state subvention, centraliza- 
tion, and protectionism. This met with opposi- 
tion from the wisest of those who had hitherto 
been his loyal pariiamentary supporters. Today 
in a Germany strewn with the wreck of autocracy 
and commercial militarism we should recall grate- 
fully such names as Bamberger and Lasker, Rick- 
ert and Richter, Theodor Barth and George von 
Bunsen. These and many more such worked for 
ideals akin to those of Cobden and they dared to 
vote against Bismarck. 



i8o Prussianism and Pacifism 

George von Bunsen was of English mother and 
also grandmother and his home in Berlin was the 
resort of all that could make a salon. No travel- 
ler of distinction failed to cultivate his society, 
and literary Germany, no less than the world of 
war and diplomacy, met under his hospitable roof 
as on a neutral field. Bunsen was an intimate at 
the palace of the Prussian Crown Prince, and his 
children were playmates of the then little princes. 
So long as Bismarckian brows did not frown over 
this happy household, Berlin could boast of at 
least one home where the Muses might have walked 
in without the goose step. But that was long 
ago. It was too good to last. 

When Bismarck changed his policy, however 
violently, he expected all to obey or else be classed 
with the "undesirable" — the Vaterlandslose gesel- 
len. Bunsen remained a free-trader when Bis- 
marck had signified his wish that all Germans 
declare for protection — that was crime enough. 
He became now an enemy in the Chancellor's 
eyes whom it was the duty of every good subject 
to shun socially and attack indirectly. Officers 
of the army and navy were warned to avoid that 
salon; and all those who looked to Bismarck for 
good or ill, whether professors of the university 
or diplomatic agents of friendly countries, were 



George von Bunsen i8i 

given to understand that intimacy with George 
von Bunsen was not the best way of securing 
friendly hearing in the bureau of foreign affairs. 
All took the hint; and soon the house of Bunsen, 
from being the resort of what was worth knowing 
in Berlin, became as one smitten with a pest, and 
Bismarck directed the quarantine. A few stran- 
gers and friends, conspicuous for their daring rather 
than for hope of promotion, still called; but these 
emphasized rather than redeemed the solitude 
which a tyrant had created. The political party 
to which he belonged was persecuted by police 
means ; proprietors of assembly-rooms were warned 
against permitting on their premises a meeting 
of men whom the great Chancellor had branded 
as disloyal. Bunsen himself was haled into court 
and harried by the public prosecutor on account 
of an alleged speech to his parliamentary electors. 
The pretext was trifling — not greater than in the 
Arnim case — but the warning was meant to fright- 
en from public life the few remaining Germans 
who had thought for themselves; who had felt 
the whiff of free parliamentary currents from 
Westminster; who had seen the great world and 
who fondly imagined that they could with impu- 
nity preach constitutional liberty in the land of 
the Wilhelms. Bunsen had heavy law costs ; and, 



1 82 Prussianism and Pacifism 

whilst on appeal the case against him was lost 
through a legal technicality, he knew that per- 
sistent prosecution at government hands would 
ruin him financially, however the verdict might 
ensue; and between that and the wreck of his 
position in the world of society, this new victim 
of Bismarckbeleidigung found himself a man without 
a country, exiled to a political desert created for 
him by a government to which he had dedicated 
the best years of his life, and his fortune into the 
bargain. A coarser man would have turned 
anarchist or emigrated; but Bunsen was the 
father of a large family, and loved his country 
loyally to the very end — when he, like Arnim. 
died of a broken heart. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

Professor Geffken — Another Victim of Bismarck — 

German Colonial Empire the Gift of a Paci- 

fistic and pro-German Government in England 

\ X 7HILE no historical student would seek to 
* ' eliminate from Germany the part played 
by Bismarck, we must remind the reader that 
few men in high office have exercised more freely 
their power to villi fy an opponent and correspond- 
ingly exalt their own merit. The men whom 
Bismarck persecuted most fiercely corresponded 
to those whom the Roman Hierarchy attacked; 
they were almost always men of learning, of travel, 
of social position, of independent character, and 
of lofty patriotism. Today we have difficulty in 
measuring the loss which Germany has sustained 
through Bismarckian persecution. In England or 
America many a public man has been in opposition 
to the government yet survived, or even loomed 
larger as the champion of a minority. But in 
the Berlin of my experience, to be politically at 

183 



1 84 Prussianism and Pacifism 

variance with the great Chancellor was to become 
a social pariah in the eyes of the court, the army, 
and society, so called. Such men as Virchow or 
Mommsen, while honoured by every learned body 
the world over, could not be invited to any party 
in Berlin, where aristocracy was expected. It 
mattered little that Barth and Richter, Lasker 
and Bamberger were scholars of eminence, and 
politically men of the first rank — they dropped 
to the level of undesirables when Bismarck passed 
the word that no officer should be seen in their 
company; that to be a loyal German one should 
ostracize all such as opposed the Chancellor. 

This being the state of servility to which Prus- 
sians had been degraded, it is not to be wondered 
at that the families of those who have been martyrs 
of state persecution, so far from praising the cour- 
age of their injured kin, deplore his injudicious 
behaviour and tremble lest vengeance should fall 
also on others of the family. In my researches 
regarding the champions of liberty in 1848, and 
even more so in regard to Bismarckian victims, 
I found that the heirs at law were interested less 
in the glory of their illustrious kinsman than in 
suppressing his very name or at least apologizing 
for the deeds which made him dear to the friends 
of freedom. From Robert Blum of '48 to George 



Professor Geffken 185 

von Bunsen of '78 the same sad tale is true — in 
in each case their descendants have been concerned 
with their own worldly success rather than vin- 
dicating the memory of a martyr. Robert Blum 
has been mentioned in my German History; and 
now that his country has at last achieved some of 
the freedom for which he died, we may hope to 
see for him a worthy monument either in Cologne, 
which was French soil at the time of his birth, or 
in Frankfort, which was a free city when it rang 
with his forensic appeals. 

One of my warm friends was the eminent author- 
ity on constitutional law, Professor Geffken — a 
name second to none in the world of juridical 
research and constructive statesmanship. He was, 
like von Bunsen, a man of wide mental horizon, 
much travel, and ample private fortune. He also 
was of the number dear to the late Emperor Fred- 
erick and his English wife, and to that extent was 
closely watched and cordially hated by Bismarck. 
It was he who drew up for the then Crown Prince 
the programme which he published when succeed- 
ing (1888) his father on the Imperial throne. It 
was a programme so modern and liberal in spirit, 
.so instinct with the personal views of an English 
princess and so opposite to those of Wilhelm 
I. and his court, that the Chancellor looked 



1 86 Prussianism and Pacifism 

impatiently for the moment when he might pun- 
ish the author. During the Hfetime of Frederick, 
this was not possible, but before his widow had 
completed her mourning, GefTken was arrested 
and put into jail on the same indefinite charge of 
high treason. Some strong men have survived 
prison life, but Geffken was of a constitution so 
frail that he had, on urgent medical advice, retired 
from active life when barely more than fifty years 
of age; and his arrest came at the age of sixty 
when he appeared many years older by reason of 
chronic infirmities. The Empress Frederick had 
given him some of her husband's diary with per- 
mission to publish it, and this was excuse enough 
for his enemy, who had now become prime minister 
to Wilhelm 11. He was charged with having 
forged the diary — a charge no less absurd than 
malicious. Bismarck had ample means of know- 
ing that the diary was genuine and also that it 
was published by authority of the author's widow. 
But he wished to strike with one Jove-like bolt, 
not merely so eminent a liberal as Geffken, but 
so exalted an opponent as the daughter of an 
English Queen. Geffken was transparently inno- 
cent, and had to be acquitted, even by German 
judges. But the vengeance was none the less 
complete and warningly dramatic. The innocent 



Personal Vengeance 187 

victim suffered in jail to such an extent physically 
and mentally that on his release after three months 
he was a broken man and lived but a few years 
longer^ another martyr over whose grave Clio 
carves the words "murdered by Bismarck." 

In this case it was not the least of the Chancel- 
lor's triumphs that the Empress Frederick was 
compelled by him to submit to these affronts and 
to feel that even her own son was a party to her 
humiliation. 

But a policy of personal vengeance, however 
successful it may be for the attainment of an imme- 
diate political advantage, rarely broadens the base 
of enduring fame any more than does Vandalism 
or Schrecklichkeit intimidate a brave enemy in 
war. Bismarck bullied and blustered and rattled 
his sabre and boycotted and prosecuted, but from 
the day of the Treaty of Frankfort to that of his 
dismissal from office (1890), although many were 
the mutilated victims of his wrath, his few victo- 
ries were purchased at a price far exceeding their 
intrinsic value. 

The Reichstag had but two Socialists in 1871; 
but in ten years they had increased to twelve; 
and they kept on increasing as fast as Bismarck 
attacked them by merely police methods. In the 
same ten years the Roman Catholic or Centrist 



1 88 Prussianism and Pacifism 

party had nearly doubled; and thus even before 
the reign of Wilhelm II., a Lutheran autocrat 
was balancing between yielding to a democratic- 
socialist majority or purchasing of the Pope his 
parliamentary support which, with all its draw- 
backs, had at least the merit of defending landed 
property; and no wonder, for is not the Roman 
Church the world's leading landlord? 

And so Bismarck sought consolation for his 
papal compromises by launching furious police 
campaigns against Socialists; then against foreign 
languages, notably French, Danish, and Polish; 
then he applied more drastic laws in the provinces 
of Alsace-Lorraine and tried to Prussianize Poland 
and the Danish provinces by placing heavy bur- 
dens on all who would not be renegades. But 
the more he bullied and persecuted and prussified 
the more did the good people of Metz and Strass- 
burg hate the name of Hohenzollern ; and in 
Thorn or Posen his success was no better, for even 
the Prussian officials were drawn by the magnet 
of Polish beauty; and their offspring were lulled 
to sleep by the pleasant music of a Slav lullaby. 

The ferocity of his chancellor's crusade against 
political heresy in the closing years of Wilhelm 
I. recalls painfully the persistent persecution of 
Protestantism by the Roman Hierarchy in France 



Growing Expansion 189 

during the years immediately preceding the fall of 
Bastille. So far from seeing that spiritual and 
intellectual forces are proof against bludgeons and 
prison bars, Bismarck met each of his failures by 
demanding an increase in severity. 

On the field of colonial expansion he was met 
more than half-way by Queen Victoria, whose 
court and cabinet at that time took so little 
interest in Britain, beyond seas, as to raise the 
suspicion that they almost deemed it good states- 
manship to cast from them vast possessions for 
which their more warlike ancestors had poured 
out much treasure, to say nothing of blood. The 
tyrant who fails in securing peace at home turns 
usually to a foreign field as a means of distract- 
ing the popular interest. Neither Wilhelm, nor 
Moltke, nor Bismarck cared for any territory that 
could not be overrun conveniently by a Prussian 
army. Nor had Frederick the Great, much less 
his three successors, given the matter a moment's 
thought. It was England herself that was respon- 
sible; or rather, that part of England which justi- 
fied the disgrace of Majuba Hill and the yet deeper 
one of abandoning Gordon in Khartoum. Each 
of these blunders, if not crimes, had to be repaired 
by subsequent sacrifices enormously costly in 
blood and money. Majuba led directly to the 



1 90 Prussianism and Pacifism 

great Boer War and Gordon's death occasioned 
the later campaign up the Nile under Kitchener. 
Bismarck originally discouraged the notion of 
German colonies, but when he discovered that the 
government of Westminster, so far from offering 
to fight, was actually giving them away with their 
compliments, what Prussian could resist! And so 
the world rubbed its eyes to find, in a very few 
years, that Wilhelm II. was to inherit not merely 
the amplified Germany accorded by the Treaty 
of Frankfort but over a million square miles of 
colonial empire which not long ago all the world 
regarded as part of the British Empire. Had the 
Victorian philanthropists received a large sum for 
this territory the commercial conscience might 
have been partially consoled; had it been even 
territory exclusively Britain's to give the case 
might have been less painful, but of the million 
square miles under consideration a large piece in 
South-west Africa belonged of right to the Cape 
Colony to which it is geographically bound as is 
New Mexico and Arizona to our South-west; and 
what^ Australian but loudly cursed a government 
that gave to Germany an Island Empire on her 
northern flanks — New Guinea, New Hebrides — 
a field where for a century English and American 
missionaries had spread respect for our language 



German Colonies 191 

and institutions; to say nothing of a large and 
growing trade with Sydney, Melbourne, and New 
Zealand. 

Wiihelm I. became reconciled to this additional 
empire when he learned at what a bargain it had 
been secured and what a vast field it was Hkely 
to be for German enterprise, and above all for 
coaling stations. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

Wilhelm I. Makes a Gentleman's Agreement with 

Leo XIII. and Secures a Solid Catholic Vote 

for his Budget 

A X HLHELM I. died in 1888, more than 
'' ^ ninety years of age, and the last ten years 
of his life were burdened by a combination of 
events which were admirably exploited by his 
Chancellor. Socialism kept increasing with each 
parliamentary election; and this, added to the 
Catholic (or Centre) party, formed so formidable 
an opposition that many feared a conflict between 
the King and his Reichstag, or in other words 
between the army and the people. The King 
wanted an ever-increasing army; he repudiated 
the constitutional clause by which his Parliament 
voted the military budget from year to year; he 
insisted upon a vote that should make him master 
of the military chest for at least seven years. The 
representatives of the people invoked the law, but 
Bismarck rattled his sabre and drew dreadful 

192 



Leo XIII. 193 

pictures of a revengeful France preparing to sack 
Berlin — frontiers that needed protection — the same 
old story which all have heard and all forget. 
This time the good people of the Fatherland were 
a bit weary of the everlasting bugaboo and many 
would have advised their beloved Chancellor to 
take indefinite leave of absence; but just then 
Pius died and in his place appeared the most 
scholarly and conciliatory Jesuit that had ever 
occupied the alleged throne of St. Peter. 

Leo XIII. immediately reversed the policy of 
his pugnacious predecessor. He abated none of 
his pretension as viceroy in the Kingdom of God, 
but he proved in fact a warm friend to the 
Lutheran Kingdom of Wilhelm. The inner history 
of this unnatural union may be better known when 
the secrets of the Vatican are published by the 
side of those in the Berlin foreign office. At this 
point, in a sketch of the two Wilhelms, it is only 
necessary to point out to those who have not 
occupied themselves much with pontifical history 
that Popes do not join hands with Lutherans 
unless there is a reason. And so the fortunes of 
the Iron Chancellor once more seemed pleasing; 
the Catholic vote now helped him against that of 
the Socialists and even more in passing the budgets 
that strengthened Wilhelm as a military autocrat. 



194 Prussianism and Pacifism 

Had Leo XIII. not become Pope he would have 
been a notable figure in an age conspicuous for 
scholarly debate and political agitation. He had 
many of the qualities which endear Erasmus to 
students of the Reformation and his character 
may be epitomized in the one act of selecting Sir 
Thomas More, the author of Utopia, as worthy 
of beatification. 

In every field of science that he entered, he 
achieved such triumph as a Macaulay might have 
envied, whether in Latin verse or physics, chem- 
istry or theology, philosophy or literature. He 
owed all his training to Jesuit fathers and we may 
safely surmise that he mastered with ease all that 
even they had to impart, so much so that at the 
age of twenty-one he had already obtained the 
rank of Doctor of Theology. From now on his 
career was one of pleasant promotion; at thirty- 
three he was diplomatic representative of the 
Vatican in Brussels; at thirty-six he was an arch- 
bishop and ruled in Perugia for the next thirty- 
two years. He was sixty-eight when Pius died 
and his elevation to the Papacy was made the 
easier to his rivals by the reflection that so vener- 
able a prelate would, in a short while, make room 
for a successor. But Leo XIII., on the contrary, 
partook bountifully of the then prevalent mania 



Bismarck Decorated by the Pope 195 

for living long. It was the age of political and 
military Nestors and why not theological as well! 
So Leo lived to be ninety- three, at least a score 
more than had been anticipated by his brother 
prelates of the sacred college. He lived to deco- 
rate Bismarck, the Lutheran, with a papal decora- 
tion in diamonds usually reserved for those who 
have extirpated heresy or at least made them- 
selves odious to Protestantism. He received three 
visits from Wilhelm 11. and before he died (1903) 
may be said to have inaugurated the policy which, 
without sacrificing any of the theoretical claims 
of his predecessors, permits good Catholics to 
adopt modern methods if in so doing they may 
win back heretics or increase the poHtical power 
of the Papacy. Leo XHL has encouraged his 
Catholics of America, France, England, etc., to 
take an active political interest in school matters 
and thus to win back for the Church through the 
ballot box what they lost under Popes who showed 
too plainly their theocratic purposes. Leo XHI. 
was a master Jesuit and professed loyalty to each 
government in turn, trusting for ultimate success 
to indirect and secret pressure exerted through 
carefully drilled and still more carefully selected 
agents or priests. In Germany he immediately 
made a quasi gentleman's agreement with the 



196 Prussianism and Pacifism 

enemy of Pius; and, whatever may have been put 
into writing or merely hinted at verbally, each of 
the contracting parties felt that he had scored a 
victory. Bismarck allowed many of the severest 
paragraphs to become faded while Leo, without 
questioning the infallibility of his predecessor, 
managed to meet the Prussian ministry of Kultur 
more than half-way and above all give the King 
what he most prized, a solid Catholic vote for 
the army and navy. 

As to whether the Autocrat or the Theocrat 
gained most in this deal, who can measure. Cer- 
tain it is that the Protestant Prussian monarchy 
gained little, if anything, by advertising its 
dependence on a Pope rather than upon the 
loyalty of a liberally educated people. To be 
sure it was not Bismarck who did the ad- 
vertising; on the contrary, he was most anxious 
to spread the notion that German Catholics 
rallied spontaneously to his policy of heavy war 
budgets and high tariffs in favour of Yunker 
landlords. 

As* I write, the last square mile of colony has 
passed from beneath Germany's rule; but in 
justice to German Catholics, we may reasonably 
feel that in the gentleman's agreement with Leo 
XIII., the Lutheran Kaiser, as master of one million 



A Gentleman's Agreement 197 

square miles of new territory in many seas, pro- 
mised his holy colleague on the Tiber that he 
would give to Catholic missionaries many and 
valuable concessions amongst his new people of 
black, brown, ginger, copper, and yellow com- 
plexions. This meant little, for he was giving away 
land that did not belong to him; and he was 
granting privileges that could be enjoyed only by 
the aid of a policeman or a punitive expedition. 
However, Wilhelm had plenty of land and a wilder- 
ness of pagans, whilst Leo had an endless line of 
missionaries of both sexes keen for martyrdom, 
and foreign adventure. The Kaiser insisted that 
all native converts should learn German and at 
least sing Die Wacht am Rhein; and Leo, in return, 
secured the aid of the German police in scouring 
the jungle for truant Kafhrs, Papuans, or Kana- 
kas. It was an arrangement that sounded well 
when dressed out by the orthodox writers of Berlin 
and the Vatican, but, in fact, it was a missionary 
scheme, recalling that which Columbus carried 
with him to the New World and which stirred 
the righteous indignation of Las Casas. Had I 
not heard on the spot some sickening details of 
German colonization in various islands of the 
Far Eastern Tropics, I too might have been hum- 
bugged by the stream of articles favourable to 



198 Prussianism and Pacifism 

missionaries and the Prussian colonial office — 
mendacious articles that no German dared contra- 
dict or whose contradiction no German paper 
dared print. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

Frederick the Noble and his Wife — Some Personal 
Memories 

WE are now at the year 1888 in which the first 
Wilhelm died full of honours at the ripe 
age of ninety-one, and in which commenced the 
reign of Wilhelm 11. , destined to end in disaster, 
not to say disgrace, after only three short decades 
of dazzling activity. These two reigns are one 
continuous development of autocratic ideals dear 
to the Junker or landed aristocracy of Prussia; and, 
had these ideals triumphed, Wilhelm II. would 
now be receiving the homage of suppliant Rajahs 
from the Ganges and Irish Catholic politicians 
from the Hudson and the Ohio. 

I have already remarked on the official difficul- 
ties that beset him who seeks to write independ- 
ently regarding the great German Revolution of 
1848— he can find more light on this period in the 
British Museum than in the collections of Berlin 
or even Munich. The History which I wrote in 

199 



200 Prussianism and Pacifism 

order to prove that the uprising against Napoleon 
in 1 813 was a popular one, gave deep offence to 
the military aristocracy in Prussia and by the 
Emperor it was regarded as hostile to his dynasty. 
Indeed we may lay it down as part of the creed 
of every modern Prussian that he pretend to ig- 
nore any activities that have not their origin at 
the Berlin court. It is for this reason that other- 
wise loyal writers on matters Hohenzollern avoid 
the reign of the Emperor Frederick or touch upon 
it as might an orthodox professor in a popish 
theological school when compelled to chronicle the 
existence of such heretical pests as Wycliffe or 
Huss, Savonarola or Martin Luther. Orthodox 
Yunkers and the generation that has passed 
through the officially tainted schools of modern 
Prussia with its Kultur propaganda skip the reign 
of the Emperor who reigned but ninety-nine days 
(March-June, 1888). The textbooks would imply 
that this was a deplorable period of lapse from 
autocratic virtue; that it was a case of mental 
deficiency — or if that position could not be main- 
tained then the public must be taught that their 
Kaiser of the shortest reign had been bewitched 
by an English wife and had ceased to be a normal 
Prussian prince. At all hazards the state religion 
must be maintained and whenever a Hohenzollern 



Empress Frederick 201 

shows a disposition towards liberal ideas it must 
be regarded as evidence of bad health or bad 
company. 

Frederick III. had been betrothed at Bucking- 
ham Palace to Queen Victoria's gifted daughter 
and from her eighteenth year to the day of his 
death they offered a cheering spectacle of happy 
family life and constant concern for works of pub- 
lic welfare. The wife in particular gave much 
of her time and money to promoting the improve- 
ment of women — more particularly to opening up 
avenues of employment in which they might earn 
honourable subsistence. In the Berlin of my time 
the man who would assert that any domestic 
servant, shop girl, or actress regarded her virginity 
as other than a commercial asset would have been 
smiled at indulgently as a recrudescent Candide. 
Women were not regarded as of any value save 
as the property of a man; they were not expected 
to go about alone save at their peril; men felt at 
liberty to make indecent proposals to any woman 
in a public place, the presumption being that she 
was out on a man hunt. The police regarded all 
women as prostitutes unless they could prove the 
contrary — they were forbidden to ride on the tops 
of omnibuses or to attend political meetings or 
even to occupy conspicuous tables in restaurants. 



202 Prussianism and Pacifism 

Empress Frederick gave her life to the task of in- 
fusing self-respect into the Prussian woman and 
for this every orthodox man cursed her and his 
orthodox wife did the same — illustrating the an- 
cient maxim that if you wish to make an enemy 
for life you have but to do him a favour. 

Her husband had early awakened the concern of 
Bismarck not only by a lack of enthusiasm for 
that minister's policy of blood and iron but by a 
scandalous disposition to speak favourably of men 
and measures constitutional. The Chancellor 
would gladly have locked up this prince as he did 
Geffken; or degraded him as he did Arnim and 
Bunsen. As to his wife he would have had her 
put in the stocks or the ducking stool — but Wil- 
helm the Venerable loved his boy Fritz, much as 
he deplored the dangerous doctrines which he had 
evidently absorbed from his wife. He would not 
do all that Bismarck would have done, but he 
yielded so far as to forbid the then Crown Prince 
from expressing any opinions in public — and the 
son had to obey. 

But the wise people knew that Frederick the 
Noble was with them in spirit, and when he 
mounted the throne every liberal breathed more 
freely; and on the streets you could tell his wife 
by some ornament on which was the head of their 



Empress Frederick 203 

beloved Fritz. Wilhelm II. was nicknamed the 
Reise Kaiser and Wilhelm I. the Greise Kaiser, but 
for Frederick the Noble was reserved a name 
infinitely more precious, Der Weise Kaiser! 

He came to the throne a dying man — exhausted 
by a syndicate of experimenting surgeons — but his 
first act (March 12, 1888) was to launch upon an 
astonished world such a proclamation as Prussia 
had never known from any ruler by right divine — 
a proclamation that made Bismarck angry but 
which made the hearts of good men rejoice at the 
prospect of a reign with less rattling of sabres and 
less persecution for Kanzlerbeleidigung. 

We cannot resist the temptation of speculating 
here on the moral greatness to which Germany 
might have aspired under the leadership of this 
man and his remarkable wife. His reign of ninety- 
nine days is practically ignored by the bulk of 
courtly historians yet that reign was marked by 
acts which in the eyes of the ruling caste were little 
short of revolutionary. The state paper inaugurat- 
ing his rule was written or inspired not by Bismarck 
but by Professor Geffken — a significant fact that 
did not fail to alarm all Yunkerdom. Next came 
a general pardon for political offenders and an 
intimation that henceforth Germany was to enjoy 
a government for the people and not for the Yun- 



204 Prussianism and Pacifism 

kers only. Several of his old and trusted liberal 
friends and advisers were selected for reward in 
the shape of a title or decoration, but though Bis- 
marck put a sharp veto upon most of them, the 
fact became known in time and the friends of the 
dying monarch increased. Bismarck also vetoed 
a marriage which the imperial pair had projected 
for one of their children — a small matter histori- 
cally, but a mighty means of bruiting to a delighted 
Yunkerthum that this Kaiser of the proletariat had 
found more than his match in their man of blood 
and iron. Rule or ruin was on the Bismarckian 
banner; yet to bully a dying man was not much of 
an achievement. Still less can we forgive him for 
launching through the press persistent defamation 
of the Empress Frederick in order to make both 
of them appear alien to German ideals and pre- 
judiced in favour of the hated English. They did, 
to be sure, attempt to teach Germans the value of 
personal cleanliness; of ventilation, and above all 
to wean them from the barbarous practice of diet- 
ing children on beer, coffee, and sausage rather 
than the milky nursery diet of civilization. To 
me the Prussian seemed to have lost the sense of 
smell for he could continue in shops, theatres, and 
schoolrooms whose odour made my head ache. 
The rooms in which I played as a child with the 



Frederick the Noble 205 

children of Frederick the Noble and his wife were 
exceptional in the Prussia of 1871 for simplicity, 
good taste, and above all fresh air. Whenever 
weather permitted we had meals in the open air, 
and these meals were my delight for there was 
always an abundance of milk and bread and plain 
English raisin cake and jam — the very opposite 
of the deleterious delikatessen diet forced upon my 
rebellious inner tubes by a tutor famed more for 
his knowledge of Greek roots than the food calories 
of a growing boy. 

At these palace entertainments there was an- 
other feature that impressed me and was never 
omitted — namely the presence of the royal parents, 
who invariably said a few welcoming words to 
each of the little guests and sent them home with 
kind messages for father and mother. All this 
happened nearly half a century ago, but at an age 
when impressions are lasting. I see them now, he 
in the undress frock coat of an infantry general — 
an old coat usually, and one comfortably loosened 
in warm weather; she leaning on his arm, the 
picture of motherly pride and domestic responsi- 
bility. They inspected the food and satisfied 
themselves that it was wholesome no less than 
sufficient and any child there could feel that the 
regime of that nursery was strict, wholesome, and 



2o6 Prussianism and Pacifism 

eminently un-Prussian. Frederick the Noble died 
at the end of his ninety-nine days, mourned sin- 
cerely by those who dreaded a return to military 
autocracy and who instinctively foreshadowed the 
crash of today. Bismarck and the Yunkers con- 
cealed their joy when in public, but privately 
praised God for having removed so dangerous a 
man from their throne. All these now turned in 
noisy loyalty to the new Emperor who was already 
dear to them as a champion of military expansion 
and mediaeval autocracy. Frederick the Noble 
was quickly expunged from the official slate, his 
widow retired far from Berlin, and even the name 
which she had given to her Potsdam palace was 
not allowed to stand — but was altered by order 
of her son. 

She bore eight children and was to them an 
exemplary mother as she was a devoted helpmeet 
to her husband. In 1901 she was released from a 
life that had lasted sixty-one years, more than half 
of which had been embittered by the persecutions 
of a Chancellor who spared neither character, age, 
nor sex. 



CHAPTER XXX 

Wilhelm II. a Pacifist until the Opening of the Kiel 

Canal — How the Change in his Policy was 

Produced 

WILHELM 11. became Kaiser in 1888 and 
thirty years later fled from the midst of his 
troops on the battle-front. Thirty years was the 
term of his grandfather's rule, counting the regency, 
and these two periods may be epitomized by noting 
that while the present Imperial refugee changed 
his chief minister half a dozen times, the first 
Wilhelm had but the one Bismarck. Hence the 
student is not surprised to learn that the three 
decades preceding 1888 were notable for continuity 
and persistence of political purpose, while these 
last three preceding the flight from Spa have been 
a perpetual source of disquietude abroad no less 
than expectant anxiety at home. In Potsdam, 
during the war of 1870, a German lad some years 
my senior who was preparing himself for pro- 
fessional life, one day took me into his confidence 

207 



2o8 Prussianism and Pacifism 

so far as to produce from their hiding-place some 
pamphlets that had belonged to his father and 
which, if discovered would, said he, cause his arrest 
and trial for treason. He was very proud of his 
father, who had fought in the revolution of '48, 
and he cherished these documents above all his 
other possessions. He was one of the few Germans 
of my time who had what we call character or 
individuality — a most un-Prussian one he was, for 
he never told me a lie. 

When I commenced to study history outside of 
government text-books, one feature that struck 
me was the almost complete effacement of what 
we call the people from modern German history; 
and when Wilhelm H. became Emperor it natur- 
ally followed that I should solicit his aid in securing 
access to the archives which are usually reserved 
for officials. My request was granted; and thus I 
was enabled to write my history from an American 
point of view. The first volume appeared in 1896. 

My reference to German affairs had been usually 
laudatory, for in every department of municipal 
and military work it is to Germany that we must 
go for lessons in the administration of cities and 
above all in that of an army. 

Wilhelm H. showed me a side of himself that 
was wholly sympathetic; he professed to hate noth- 



Unfriendliness of Russia 209 

ing so much as war, and on each occasion that the 
subject recurred he vehemently professed the one 
ambition of mounting to heaven on a bandwagon 
blazing with the text: "He kept us out of war. " 

Even when the behaviour of Russia was un- 
friendly, not to say bellicose; when the Czar 
slighted him personally and advertised marked 
preference for France; when the hitherto German 
University of Dorpat became wholly Russified; 
when the Greek hierarchy was encouraged by the 
police to persecute German Lutherans in the Baltic 
provinces; when, in short, the Romanoff dynasty 
offered every provocation to a duel, Wilhelm II. 
told me earnestly and with a bang of the fist on his 
table that under no conceivable circumstances 
would he ever go to war with Russia. "We two," 
he exclaimed earnestly, "are all that now remains 
of absolute monarchy in Europe!" — and now 
(19 1 9) the Romanoff empire is an ash heap and 
Germany a wilderness of debating clubs and riot- 
ous reformers. 

At the outset of his reign he was not merely on 
good terms with official England, but cultivated 
ardently the friendship of her people. In this he 
found me a warm supporter, for nothing seemed 
then more conducive to the peace of Europe than 
an understanding between John Bull, the big police- 
14 



210 Prussianism and Pacifism 

man of the high seas, and the Wilhelm who com- 
manded the strongest land force of his day. To- 
gether they could readily restrain others from war 
and inaugurate the reign of a new Augustus. Nor 
did this then appear Utopian, for in those early 
years of his reign British officers exchanged with 
their colleagues of Berlin military information re- 
garding Russia; and both looked forward to a 
campaign as allies, not merely on the Volga but 
also on the Oxus. 

During these early years I had made a Rob Roy 
canoe cruise from the headquarters of the Danube 
to the Russian border near Galatz, eighteen hun- 
dred miles; had then made two different journeys 
through western Russia between the Black Sea 
and Baltic bringing back some information useful 
to both England and Germany. Europe then 
halted on the brink of war and the halt was called 
by Wilhelm. Had he then fought he would have 
had an ally in England and, above all, a just cause 
of quarrel in the persistent persecution of his co- 
religionists in Russia. He could easily have had 
all Poland for him by a few generous promises — 
to say nothing of the Jews who had much to com- 
plain of at Muscovite hands. Today, looking back 
over the bloodshed, barbarity, and unsportsman- 
like behaviour that has characterized this war; 



The Kiel Canal 211 

and, above all, the inanity of the pretext, we stand 
amazed at one who missed so good an opportunity 
as that which offered in 1891 — and which never 
came to him a second time. 

The Kiel Canal, built on territory torn from 
Denmark (1864), was opened in 1895 — thus raising 
in Wilhelm the belief that he could dominate both 
Baltic and North Sea and ultimately claim a mari- 
time rank second to no other power — not even 
England. 

Perhaps this was at the back of Wilhelm's brain 
even when pretending more than formal friend- 
ship with the land of his grandmother — or perhaps 
we do wrong to seek rational explanation from the 
acts or words of one whom learned alienists have 
pronounced a paranoiac. Wilhelm I. and his Chan- 
cellor were never deterred for long by moral 
scruples ; but through the duplicities and even for- 
geries of Bismarck we are compelled to recognize 
a result commensurate with the crimes committed 
in their behalf. In the case of Wilhelm II. we may 
rank him as a disciple of the Iron Chancellor in all 
that pertains to diplomatic and military villainy, 
but we cannot discover the higher qualities with- 
out which even the most elaborate and artistic 
mendacity is barren. Consider the years 1888 to 
1896 and the kaleidoscopic whirligig in and about 



212 Prussianism and Pacifism 

Berlin! Each year Wilhelm visited England — his 
grandmother at Windsor or some nobleman on his 
estates — or best of all the yachts and warships in 
Southampton water. He wished to be known as 
first of all a true British sportsman to whom the 
stiff Prussian etiquette was wearisome. He loved 
to dress up as a British admiral and show interest 
in the fighting fleet of his neighbors; indeed, he has 
to me reeled off details regarding the names, ton- 
nage, speed, and armament of ships flying the white 
ensign, astonishing in any but an active officer of 
that navy. England felt flattered by his thirst for 
maritime knowledge and showed him her treasures 
afloat as to one who would no doubt reciprocate 
at the first convenient opportunity. But as time 
passed and German naval manoeuvres were an- 
nounced, and English officers (to say nothing of 
American) were carefully kept on land, or at least 
at a safe distance, enthusiasm began to cool, par- 
ticularly when the true purpose of the Kiel Canal 
came to be more generally understood. Of course 
all the good ships of the German navy were there 
displayed and of course all but German officers 
were excluded. The United States sent Admiral 
Evans to that international congress of sea notables 
and his fleet comprised what was most modern in 
naval construction and — most worth concealing 



Wilhelminian Mentality 213 

from a foreigner. But who then could think of 
Wilhelm II. as other than the friend of America! 
So the German Emperor passed a jovial evening on 
board the American flagship; inspected the latest 
inventions which we had successfully applied; 
made himself popular by his bluff ness and infantile 
thirst for novelty and carried this beautiful nursery 
trait so far that he next day secured through a 
trusty deputy, and of course with American assist- 
ance, all the detailed information he coveted. 
In return, no American was permitted to see any- 
thing aboard any of the Kaiser's craft! — and it is 
interesting to reflect that three years later the same 
Admiral Diedrichs whom I met then at Kiel was 
in the name of this very same genial Kaiser, seek- 
ing to bully the American Admiral Dewey in 
Manila Bay. 

In the study of Wilhelminian mentality I am 
therefore inclinea to believe that two impulses 
were jostling the Imperial brain between 1 888 and 
1896 — one to join with England and defy Russia, 
the other to imitate England until such time as he 
might defy her also, not merely on land but on the 
seven seas as well. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

Some Anecdotes about Wilhelm II. — His Klepto- 
mania and Cleverness in Securing Information 
— Yachting in Germany — Kiel 

T F a guest should carry off a pair of my trousers 
in his baggage the inference would be that it 
had been done by mistake. If, however, the same 
sort of absent-mindedness should recur at other 
houses and by the same agency we might be justi- 
fied in diagnosing the disease as either kleptomania 
or worse. The world was very indulgent to Wil- 
helm 11. in his earlier years and many violent 
expressions were forgiven because they smacked 
of extreme youth and, after all, sounded warlike, 
manly, and generous. When he told his recruits 
that they must be ready to shoot even their own 
parents, if the order came from their Kaiser, no 
one then believed him to be in earnest ; and when he 
referred to all political opponents as undesirables 
and vagabonds {Vaterlandslose gesellen), older 
people smiled and assumed that such words were 

214 



Regis Voluntas 215 

spoken in the heat of an after-dinner speech and 
would be forgotten when the fumes of wine should 
have passed away. But Wilhelm II. was no less 
pious nor less autocratic than his illustrious 
resting-in-God-grandf ather ; and, while he built 
churches to an extent that was edifying to the 
disciples of peace, he reared portentous barracks 
on a scale to delight the worshippers of Mars. He 
was never weary of reminding his subjects that his 
will was law, because he was divine; and therefore 
disobedience to his will was tantamount to sacri- 
lege. In the golden book of the free and very 
liberal city of Munich he wrote over his Imperial 
signature the scandalous words borrowed from a 
Roman Cassar, Regis Voluntas, suprema lex — 
or, done into easy English, "I recognize no Con- 
stitution or Parliament — my word alone is law!" 
The Mayor of Munich showed me this in his book, 
nor did he disguise his disgust at the insult offered 
to a self-governing city — and this by one who was 
then guest within its gates. One day the Kaiser 
referred to the increase of Socialism, and said to 
me with blazing eyes and clenched fist: "They are 
not dangerous yet, but so soon as they show signs 
of meaning mischief I shall make short work of 
them." 

Shortly after this was the annual reunion of 



2i6 Prussianism and Pacifism 

Socialists in the northern part of Berlin, and I spent 
a part of the day very agreeably in their company, 
for it was a family holiday and the casual stranger 
would have noticed nothing more than a rather 
large beer garden filled with neatly dressed men, 
women, and children, chatting or enjoying the 
music. Then came time for the march and of 
course I joined in a tramp through Berlin with my 
new-found friends. No banners were allowed and 
policemen were in force the whole way eager for 
an excuse to show their zeal against the political 
pariah. That evening the Emperor asked me 
jovially: "Well — and how did you spend your 
day?" "Marching in the Socialist parade!" I 
said. The Emperor looked cloudy for a moment, 
then changed his mind, recalled that I was not a 
subject, and asked with a touch of irony: "And 
what did you think of them?" "If those people 
are what you consider your worst, then you are to 
be congratulated, " was my answer. At which the 
Emperor looked hard at me for a moment and then 
talked of something else. Dr. Hinzpeter, his tutor 
in our playmate days, said to me after his pupil 
had mounted the throne: "I have never been able 
to explain why the Emperor was ever attracted to 
you!" And without commenting on a tactfulness 
wholly Prussian, I cheerfully admit that the con- 



Wilhelm and the Miniature 217 

scientious but painfully unimaginative Hinzpeter 
voiced a problem that no doubt caused him infinite 
worry. The year 1896 is now so far away that 
if Hinzpeter should repeat his question through 
some obliging agent of the spiritual world, I might 
be tempted to reply that Wilhelm courted me for 
the same reason that he delighted in The Last of 
the Mohicans and "Buffalo Bill. " To him I was a 
novelty; and above all I had no interests in Ger- 
many and no favours to ask of him. As an American 
I could say words for which a courtier would have 
been disgraced; and while from him I have ac- 
cepted nothing save innumerable portraits, which 
my wife conceals behind war loan posters of Gen- 
eral Pershing, he, on the contrary, has taken from 
me many and valuable presents to which his title 
is little better than that of my supposititious guest 
with the yearning for alien trousers. He showed 
so ardent an interest in my priceless miniature of 
the Queen Luise, that I offered to let him see it — 
reminding him that I valued it highly as a gift 
from the venerable Queen of Hanover whose blind 
husband had been dethroned by Wilhelm I. (1866). 
Never was that miniature handed back to me, al- 
though I spoke of it earnestly to the Emperor's 
principal aide-de-camp, the late General von 
Zitzewitz. Not only did Wilhelm rob me of that 



21 8 Prussianism and Pacifism 

precious portrait, but his courtiers looked at one 
another with stupefaction when I made so strange 
a claim upon one who was evidently not accus- 
tomed to restoring what had once come under his 
all coveting hands. This happened one year before 
the Kiel Canal opening ; and now that his character 
has had more ample scope for showing its purely 
Prussian features I recall with bitterness my fa- 
vourite American cruising canoe Caribee in which 
I had shot the rapids of the Iron Gates. Wilhelm 
showed much enthusiasm for this to him novel 
craft; and, as final argument towards its acquisi- 
tion, promised me that each of his many sons in 
turn should learn to be expert canoeists. It seemed 
therefore no less a patriotic than a friendly act to 
present this costly and beautiful craft to one who 
loudly proclaimed his love for yachting in general 
and this canoe in particular. But while I have 
lost my matchless Caribee, the Kaiser has broken 
his word, for when I visited her in 191 3, she was 
hidden away amid other dust-covered nautical 
curios in an obscure corner of his boat-house at 
Potsdam. The old guardian did not know who I 
was and I stayed but long enough to learn that my 
canoe had never been used and that I had been the 
victim of a Prussian promise. And now that there 
is a republic on the Havel I fondly dream of the 



Imperial Yacht Club 219 

day when Carihee and Queen Luise will rejoice the 
eyes of my declining years and thus forgive me 
for ever having put my trust (or trousers) in the 
hands of a Hohenzollern. 

Wilhelm also owes me money, for on coming to 
the throne he immediately started a German imi- 
tation of the English Royal Yacht Squadron and 
constrained his faithful to become members. Of 
course I joined, although during my twenty-five 
years of life membership I was only once in the 
club rooms and then but long enough to note that 
no one else was there but myself; and that no one 
was expected ever to make use of these rooms 
excepting officers in uniform. I had paddled 
ashore in a Caribee replica from the vessel on which 
I was quartered as Kaiser's guest during the canal 
opening festival (1895) and was sharply challenged 
by the sentry when meaning to land at the stage 
facing the yacht club rooms. He had orders to 
shoot any one attempting this — unless they were 
in uniform. So I parleyed and Prussianized to 
the point of being permitted to visit the Com- 
mandant of the naval academy, whom I knew, 
and who was ipso facto guardian of the build- 
ing in which were the so-called club rooms. 
But for this diplomatic duplicity, or shall I 
say presence of mind, I might have today 



220 Prussianism and Pacifism 

boasted of being expelled from a club that I had 

never seen. 

The Kaiser's yacht club quickly filled, and the 
annual membership volume was handsomely illus- 
trated with portraits, diagrams, and Imperial 
emblems. Myself was already member of an 
English yacht club, an arch-Corinthian one, all 
of whose members handled their own craft and 
loved the sea for the wholesome buffeting that gives 
keen joy to the natural born sailor. It was there- 
fore surprising to me on glancing over this alleged 
club of German yachtsmen to find on its lengthy 
list scarce any save such as regard the chief end of 
this noble sport to be the wearing of white shoes 
and a cap bearing a conspicuous emblem. In this 
list I recognized my many friends of the Berlin 
court who, like myself, joined to please the Kaiser; 
and to whom the stem or stern of a ship meant 
no more than they did to Josephus Journalisticus 
when he was one day told to be Secretary of the 
United States Navy. Of course I do not count the 
German naval officers who raced mainly in govern- 
ment boats — but the Kaiser did ; and the list there- 
for made up in quantity of names what it lacked in 
quality. There were a few dozen princes, Japanese, 
Italian, etc., also English and American millionaire 
owners of steam yachts, who had joined the club 



German Sportsmen 221 

as though it were an act incidental to writing one's 
name in the Visitors' book at the palace. The club 
in short was a sham, for only in name did it bear 
any resemblance to the real yacht clubs of England 
and America. Its true colours were hoisted in 1914, 
when it converted its picture pages into political 
cartoons depicting alleged triumphs of the German 
navy over the discomfited ships of France, Italy, 
and more particularly England. In view of the 
sorry showing made by the Kaiser's navy through- 
out the war, and particularly in its final surrender 
without a fight in 191 8, such cartoons stir our 
laughter no less than our contempt. Is there a 
club of gentlemen throughout the world — any- 
where between the Thames and Tokyo — that could 
show such bad taste as to make even the pages of 
its leading yacht association a vehicle for propa- 
gating political falsehood such as only a Prussian 
landlubber could relish? Of course I wrote a letter 
condemning this unsportsmanlike behaviour and of 
course I was promptly expelled and, of course, my 
money was not returned ; and I can only hope that 
all other non-German members have been similarly 
treated. 

Wilhelm never missed any opportunity of plac- 
ing himself at the head of a sporting event if it 
had an international character; if it drew foreign 



222 Prussianism and Pacifism 

yachts to Kiel and, above all, if it proclaimed the 
new gospel of Hohenzollern hegemony afloat. Now 
that we have a wealth of documentary proof re- 
garding his treachery towards those who had 
trusted him, it is interesting to call attention to his 
behaviour in 1912, on the occasion of the last nota- 
ble yacht race across the Atlantic from Sandy 
Hook to the Lizard. Robert E. Tod (Lieut. 
Commander, U. S. N., at this moment — in charge 
of the port of Brest — ) inaugurated this event and 
deserves credit for reviving the spirit for deep sea 
sailing amongst yachtsmen. The yachts were all 
either English or American, and there was origin- 
ally not the slightest idea or desire that Germany 
should be in any way mixed up in the matter. To 
the amazement of an innocent world, however, the 
papers announced in the midst of the preliminaries 
that his Gracious Majesty Wilhelm IL would as- 
sume patronage of the event; would offer a costly 
prize for the winner, and would console the others 
by giving each a photo of himself duly autographed. 
But he rightly feared that our gallant yachtsmen, 
after their stormy three thousand miles, might wish 
to rest content at the snug anchorage beneath the 
windows of a real yacht club at Cowes or stretch 
their legs in Piccadilly and Pall Mall, rather than 
on the wearisome streets of a Baltic, city. So he 



Robert E. Tod 223 

craftily compelled them to continue their voyage 
all the way to the Kiel Yacht Club under pain of 
losing the alleged costly prizes, to say nothing of 
Imperial favour. The Kaiser again broke his word, 
for I was a guest on Captain Tod's schooner, and 
when we reached the Lizard no Imperial stake- 
boat or timekeeper was there as had been promised, 
nor did my gallant host receive a copy of the cov- 
eted photograph although he claimed it through 
the Kaiser's naval attache in Washington. The 
whole episode would be insignificant save for 
illuminating a dark corner in the Kaiser — a corner 
whence have crawled far too many unsportsman- 
like reptiles. No one had asked him to be patron 
of this Anglo-American Yacht race; indeed, his 
meddling was privately resented however dis- 
creetly it may have been accepted in public. He 
had no interest in the matter save that of magni- 
fying the importance of his own Yacht Club and 
correspondingly minimizing that of his Uncle 
Edward VII. He did not enter a yacht — on the 
contrary, he had to bring pressure upon a syndicate 
of German merchants who finally fitted out one 
competitor, built in America, but dressed out to 
look like a bona fide product of Germany. The 
members of the mercantile syndicate that came 
to the rescue of their Imperial master in this 



224 Prussianism and Pacifism 

crisis no doubt were each rewarded by a red 
eagle order of the fourth class, but they would 
no doubt now gladly exchange this for the money 
they sank. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

Wilhelm and the Jameson Raid — Dismissal of 
Bismarck 

EVER since Great Britain gave to Germany her 
million square miles of Colonial Empire I 
have noted a steady increase in the hatred felt 
toward the Victorian benefactor. So far from 
recognizing the magnanimity, not to say pro- 
German pacifism that marked the policy of West- 
minster, the Prussians were trained to believe that 
courtesy was synonym for weakness and that it 
was the duty of a strong man to beat and rob a 
weaker one. Whilst the labour party agitated for 
better conditions of life, the Berlin Government 
kept pace by pointing out that England was their 
enemy and that matters would improve when the 
black eagle of Prussia was planted more frequently 
in lands now occupied by the banner of St. George. 
The philosopher who claimed that Truth alone 
was mighty and would prevail must have lived in 
that happy time when there were no Sinn Feiners 
IS 225 



226 Prussianism and Pacifism 

and no Prussians; for Truth means nothing to 
those who are not permitted to open their eyes. 
What boots it that for a hundred years England 
has been the mother of self-governing colonies and 
that under British rule Ireland has more liberal 
representation than even Scotland or Wales? 
Hatred of England is in the creed of the modern 
Hun-Hibernian and it darkens his political vision. 
On the first day of January, 1896, the world was 
startled by the first shot in a series of quasi skir- 
mishes culminating in the grand raid of 1914. I 
was dining that night in Berlin with a member of 
the diplomatic body and at the same table sat two 
of the Prussian ministry. News had arrived that 
a band of armed Englishmen, under Dr. Jameson, 
had marched into the Transvaal to relieve Johan- 
nesburg which at that time was ruled despotically 
and very inefficiently by the Boers. Their presi- 
dent Kruger was an illiterate and fanatical speci- 
men of the primitive South African cattle-herder, 
reminiscent of a frenzied Peter the Hermit or John 
Brown of Ossawatomie. He was uncompromis- 
ingly 'pious in a faith whose devil had hoofs and 
horns and spoke English. He knew of John Bull 
only what he heard from Prussian agents who 
flattered him and incidentally secured contracts 
for arms and equipment. His private secretary 



The Jameson Raid 227 

was of German education and sympathy ; and if I 
managed to learn something of the political ma- 
chinery that was hurrying the Boers to their fate 
a few years later, it was owing to having friends 
amongst the Germans who then ruled Dr. Leyds 
and his Transvaal president. 

The Jameson Raid was instigated and financed 
by a small syndicate of mine owners, mostly Jew, 
who were hampered in their enterprises by the 
very mediaeval and corrupt methods adopted by 
their masters in Pretoria. The bulk of the Jo- 
hannesburg population was English, and these were 
weary of paying all the taxes and getting nothing 
in return — not even a vote. And therefore any 
raid that would put an end to so undemocratic a 
state of things was welcome throughout South 
Africa, save amongst the agents and dupes of 
Prussia. As all know, the Jameson raid was no 
more successful than John Brown's into Virginia; 
"Doctor Jim" and his followers were made pris- 
oners and the whole matter would have simmered 
down to rank with many similar border troubles, 
in countries of like character, had not Wilhelm II. 
seized this opportunity for proclaiming to the 
world a purpose hitherto carefully concealed — at 
least from me. 

Without the constitutional countersign of his 



228 Prussianism and Pacifism 

prime minister (the amiable and senile Hohen- 
lohe), he launched from his Kreuzberg Olympus an 
electric bolt whose eccentric flashes alarmed every 
cabinet of Europe, and whose ultimate force pene- 
trated the soil of South Africa so deeply as to make 
every burgher from Cape Town to the Zambesi 
feel that henceforth the Boer had a champion in 
Berlin. This cable of the Kaiser, commonly called 
the Kruger despatch, called forth almost as much 
consternation amongst responsible officials of the 
Wilhelmstrasse as it did surprise and anger through- 
out the English-speaking world. The words of 
Wilhelm II. were few and ambiguous, but to 
the mind of a superheated Kruger and a vio- 
lently anti-English council whose understandings 
were of the primitive and apostolic order, subject 
to sudden passionate emotions divinely inspired 
from Berlin — there could be but one sense — 
namely, that the German Emperor would send his 
entire army to Pretoria rather than permit Queen 
Victoria to rule there any longer. 

England answered this insulting cable by mo- 
bilizing a flying squadron. The German army 
did not move on Pretoria; and the official press of 
the Kaiser published miles of type proving most 
effusively that the words of the cable were very 
innocent, and that England should not feel hurt 



The Kruger Despatch 229 

by language so Christian — so timely! But my 
two friends of the Prussian Cabinet had no share 
in this mendacious press view. When I asked them 
what they thought of the Kaiser's cable, each 
rolled his eyes to the ceiling and each clasped his 
hands over his head and each exclaimed with 
bitter earnestness: Herrrr Gott! All of which 
being interpreted meant that each desired to say: 
"Great God! What madness! What next! What 
must be the end of Germany with such a reckless 
hand on the helm!" The Kruger despatch con- 
verted England from a complaisant and very credu- 
lous friend into a suspicious, not to say hostile, 
neighbour. The Kaiser had virtually challenged 
her to a fight — but had quickly quitted the field on 
discovering to his disappointment that her navy 
at least was quite ready; and that behind it was 
an aroused public sentiment which he had not 
anticipated. 

Needless to say that what I wrote from South 
Africa in regard to German meddling in British 
affairs pleased Wilhelm II. even less than my his- 
tory, for in dealing with the Kruger despatch I 
pointed out that he, as Constitutional Emperor, 
violated his oath by emitting an important state 
document without the countersign of a responsible 
minister. There is a legend about the bureaus of 



230 Prussianism and Pacifism 

his capital that the cable was indeed read to some 
high official — possibly the Chancellor Hohenlohe — 
and that this official managed to tone down some 
passages that were originally more offensive than 
those ultimately entrusted to the telegraph. Even 
so, the time had come when he thought it well to 
announce that he not only did very well without 
Bismarck, but needed no prime minister at all, in 
the constitutional sense. 

We of America have gradually become accus- 
tomed to a President who selects members of a 
Cabinet as others choose a chauffeur, a butler, or a 
valet; but then our Constitution is more than a 
century old and therefore regarded as out of date 
by politicians who draw their theories from the 
Republic of Plato and their language from the 
rhetorical arsenal of socialism. The founders of 
the American Commonwealth would feel as lone- 
some at the office entrance of the White House as 
the author of Christianity on the steps of the Vati- 
can. Wilhelm II. in 1896 brushed aside the Con- 
stitution of Germany in a manner that would have 
shocked his autocratic grandfather. Grave Ger- 
mans wagged their heads mournfully at this des- 
patch; for much as they might hate Victoria, or 
wish well to her enemies, they could not foresee 
good from nullifying a clause of their Constitution 



Why Bismarck Retired 231 

which was about the only one protecting the 
smaller states from acts purely Prussian and 
arbitrary. 

In 1890, Wilhelm II. had explained to me with 
much emphasis and apparent frankness his reasons 
for dismissing Bismarck. Those which he gave 
did honour to his moral courage no less than to his 
filial piety; and as I had never seen in the Iron 
Chancellor more than the embodiment of superior 
cunning and physical power — I gladly gave credit 
to this version. Wilhelm told me that Bismarck 
had become simply impossible; that his brutal 
methods had not merely discredited Hohenzollern 
rule amongst Danes, Poles, and French, but they 
had not achieved the success promised. And, aside 
from failure in matters of domestic policy, the 
Kaiser's decision to part with the veteran Chan- 
cellor had been reached, he assured me, by learning 
of the part he had played in permitting attacks 
upon the reputation of a woman whom he revered 
no less as a gifted mother than as the exalted 
Empress before whom even a Bismarck owed 
obedience. 

He saw in the Bismarck of 1890 an official usurp- 
ing Imperial powers ; and it was his duty to protect 
the Crown from encroachment — even from so 
powerful a source. In 1896 the roles were reversed. 



232 Prussianism and Pacifism 

It was now an Emperor encroaching upon his own 
Constitution, but there was no Bismarck — at least 
not in office. Since 1890 Wilhelm has had many 
ministers but all have been pliant or easily dis- 
missed. In 1896 he decided to throw aside the 
mask of moderation, not to say pacifism, to which 
the world was growing accustomed ; and from this 
point on to the moment of raiding France from 
behind a curtain of poisonous gas we have almost 
annual and increasing evidences of megalomania 
complicated with acute anglophobia ; also a fanati- 
cal conviction that he was the divine agent for 
purifying a rotten world by ruling it according 
to the new gospel of Prussian Kultur. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

Wilhelm's Anti-English Crusade — Missionary Policy 
— Seizure of Kiaochow — German Treatment 
of Rival Traders in their Colonies 

\ X 7ILHELM failed in 1896— at least he failed 
'' ' in the field of war and diplomacy; but his 
people at home responded to a propaganda against 
England which was intensified by the Boer War 
(1899) and which made this Great War of 191 4 
almost a fanatical crusade. But throughout South 
Africa, to say nothing of Australia, Canada, India, 
and the Eastern ports German traders cursed their 
Kaiser for a meddlesome swashbuckler, because 
from the day of the Kruger Despatch Germans be- 
came less welcome as commercial travellers. How 
often have I heard honest and loyal Germans say: 
"Ach! if that Kaiser of ours would only leave us 
alone ! — he spoils our business with his everlasting 
sword rattling!" 

But these Germans who were scattered through- 
out the great colonial world of England had little 

233 



234 Prussianism and Pacifism 

influence at home where the Prussian principle of 
expansion prevailed — the principle of predatory 
warfare disguised in various ways according to the 
necessities of each case. 

In 1897 the next war move of Wilhelm was made 
against China; and the pretext was pleasing to 
the Pope no less than to a syndicate of German 
contractors. Two Christian missionaries had been 
killed up country by a fanatical mob who cordially 
detested all propagandists, particularly those of 
the popish persuasion. The Chinese Government 
had sought to dissuade these men of mistaken zeal 
from invading an interior city with their doctrines 
of social anarchy; but a conflict was desired by 
Berlin ; pretext for war was needed and a couple of 
missionaries more or less mattered little compared 
with the greater glory to God and Kaiser when the 
Imperial German Eagle should scream throughout 
the sacred province of Confucius and German loco- 
motives whistle from Kiaochow to Tsi-nan-fu. 
Men are murdered at short intervals throughout 
our great republic, sometimes by mobs; but we 
would smile at those who should therefor call us a 
semi-civilized people. In certain sections of Spain 
or South America, Italy, or even the enlightened 
home of St. Patrick a mob would make short work 
of any missionary daring to preach anti-papal 



Christianity in China 235 

doctrine. Such people would be assisted to the 
nearest lamp post whether they drew their salary 
from a Buddhist, Brahmin, Mahometan, or Metho- 
dist society for the spread of truth. 

China to me, is not merely one of the most 
favoured in all that makes for geographical grand- 
eur and fertility of soil, but her people have prac- 
tised the essentials of the Christian religion many 
centuries before Christ wandered through Palestine. 
The great Empire of Cathay, well named the 
Middle Kingdom, has an area about equal to ours 
with a population three times as great. The honest 
merchant or tourist may travel from one end to the 
other with less danger to his life or pocket than on 
any similar stretch in the United States — indeed 
he will be amazed at the high standards of social 
purity, domestic happiness, and financial honesty 
in a country where politicians and lawyers are 
happily few. While Europe has been the scene of 
interminable persecution and religious wars ever 
since Christianity secured the secular arm as an 
ally, China has not only preached, but practised, 
tolerance to all purely religious bodies. The doc- 
trines of the gentle Buddha have proved congenial 
to a peace-loving people, and the wisdom of Con- 
fucius has provided a proverbial philosophy 
satisfying to the man of letters no less than to the 



236 Prussianism and Pacifism 

labouring coolie. Strange it is then to those who 
learn of the worid mainly through missionaries, 
that in a land where dozens of religions flourish in 
peaceful rivalry, the only one singled out for public 
reprobation should be that of the "meek and 
lowly" Jesus. If you ask a Chinese man of the 
world he will tell you that of all sects operating in 
China not one behaves disloyally save only the 
Christian, and more particularly, the Roman 
Catholic. All other sects mind their own business 
and minister to their own souls. The Christian 
alone pushes into the country by means of gun- 
boats and punitive expeditions preceded by offen- 
sive treaties repugnant to the people. The Chris- 
tian not merely denounces a faith that is five 
centuries older than his own, but teaches that a 
Chinaman should be loyal to a ruler on the Tiber 
rather than to one on the Yangtze or Hoang-ho. 
In other words the Chinese head of a respectable 
family sees in our well-financed missionary estab- 
lishment little more than a huge propaganda cal- 
culated to undermine domestic virtue and on its 
ruins rear a theocracy, plutocracy, or autocracy 
engineered by foreigners. 

Imagine then the scandal caused no less in China 
and Japan than on the Ganges and the Irrawaddy 
when Wilhelm II. drew with his own hands a horrid 



The Kaiser Chuckles 237 

picture of some Wagnerian dragon about to 
pounce upon several cowering German children. 
Over the pouncing monster hovered a slim lieuten- 
ant of the Prussian cuirassier guards labelled St. 
Michael — who, of course, kills the Buddhist gar- 
goyle. The Emperor has genius in so many fields 
that he is necessarily devoid of talent in any; and, 
therefore, this picture had to be touched up by a 
professional draughtsman before it was launched 
on its disastrous course. This was Wilhelm's con- 
ception of the "Yellow peril" and to make it clear 
that the mythical beast was intended to symbolize 
all Oriental races and religions he attached this 
legend: "People of Europe, protect your most 
sacred treasures ! ' ' 

How this recalls 19 14! Whenever in this war 
Wilhelm contemplated some fresh infringement of 
international law he would first charge his enemy 
with the crime and then plead it in justification. 
Thus in 1897 having first inflamed the mind of his 
people with hatred of a race distinguished for its 
unwarlike organization he chose a moment when 
the garrison of Kiaochow had not a round of 
powder in order to make a raid into its waters and 
hold it by way of indemnity for the two dead 
missionaries. Is it to be wondered at if the Kaiser 
chuckled when he learned the good news ! By the 



238 Prussianism and Pacifism 

loss of only two Germans he had secured lordship 
over Chinese territory about equal in size and 
population to the whole of France — and all this 
without firing a shot or expending a single extra 
mark! What he had lost at Pretoria was amply 
made up to him in Shantung ; and as he rubbed his 
hands he must have murmured softly beneath his 
Schnurrhartbinde: "If my missionaries only hold 
out, I shall soon own the earth. " 

The German seizure of Kiaochow was an act 
of piracy deeply resented by Japan no less than by 
China. It was also resented by all who traded in 
the Far East. German apologists, who have echoed 
the statements put forth by the Berlin foreign 
office, have sought to justify this rape by pointing 
to acquisitions made by Great Britain. There 
would be merit in such a plea if any German could 
point to any British colony where the British flag 
was not welcome to the natives no less than to 
traders in search of justice. Germans flock to 
Sydney, Calcutta, Rangoon, and Singapore because 
under the British flag they share in all the rights 
of the Englishman with very few of his burdens. 
Consequently the Chinese welcome Englishmen 
as masters of Hong Kong; they made no objec- 
tion when the Kowloon territory was annexed 
(1898) and Wei-hai-wei became British almost 



German Colonial Methods 239 

automatically after the Prussian seizure of Kiao- 
chow. 

Throughout the Far East from time out of mind 
the flag of Great Britain has meant suppression of 
piracy; charts, lighthouses, and freedom of the 
seas. On the contrary wherever the German flag 
has appeared there have come the selfish methods 
of Prussia, the unequal administration of law, 
the violation of treaties, revival of slavery and 
sharp discrimination against foreigners. And while 
throughout the British world Germans continued 
to enjoy the treatment of the most favoured, in 
every German colony the English trader was an 
object of petty persecution instigated by officials 
and gladly seconded by their all too willing coun- 
trymen. This matter I have ventilated freely 
wherever opportunity offered in the press or on the 
platform before bodies of German geographers or 
economists — but my words have been attributed 
to pro-English prejudice. 

When Wilhelm annexed Kiaochow he made a 
quasi treaty on the subject which sounded well 
enough and would have been hailed with universal 
joy had it been signed by a British plenipotentiary. 
But this German treaty soon proved another scrap 
of paper; for whatever the wording might have 
been, the practical effect was to make the whole of 



240 Prussianism and Pacifism 

Shantung one Prussian preserve in which other 
than Germans entered at their peril. 

Next year it was the turn of the United States — 
but before entering Manila Bay let me point out 
that Prussia in her dealings with other nations has 
so cloaked her dishonest proceedings that at each 
individual one her neighbours have not thought 
it worth a war, albeit the sum of her petty crimes 
has led directly to the prison of Amerongen. 

My first visit in Chinese waters was 1876, my 
second in 1898, the third in 1906, and the last in 
19 10. Each of these intervals marked the progress 
of Prussian propaganda with its hostile head to- 
wards England. All white nations fraternize when 
ten thousand miles from home and all would natur- 
ally recognize the debt due to England for such 
rights as they enjoy in countries where political 
institutions are of a precarious nature. The Ger- 
man would naturally have been a co-operative unit 
in 1898 as he was in 1876; but his Consul and the 
agents of subsidized lines and the commercial 
travellers acting for banks and manufacturing 
houses affiliated with Government bureaus of 
Berlin — all these together united in encouraging 
separate German clubs, in every British or treaty 
port. In these the German language only was 
permitted and every scheme was encouraged that 



Colonial Propaganda 241 

could damage English prestige and exalt the glory 
of Deutschland in the eyes of Malay, Hindoo, or 
Chinese. In 1876 there was but one sentiment, 
one club in each of the Asiatic treaty ports. Here 
gathered the English and Americans, — merchants, 
travellers, naval officers, and here were discussed 
common measures for streets, fire brigade, local 
police, or defence in case of native riots. The whole 
white community was one, whether Swiss, or 
Swede, French, German, or Anglo-Saxon. And so 
did these happy families remain until the poison 
of "Deutschland liber Alles!" worked its way 
from the centres of propaganda in Berlin, thanks 
to the many subsidized agencies that have followed 
in the wake of the new policy of colonization. 
People far away felt this malevolent influence but 
those of London could not. And while German 
officials truculently demanded as their right every 
scrap of privilege commonly regarded as inter- 
national courtesy, English merchants found scant 
sympathy when they sought to interest their 
colonial department in case after case in which the 
Kaiser's Government had violated treaties and 
misused English merchants. And so Wilhelm 11. 
was encouraged in his dreams of Empire by dis- 
covering that the dreams of Downing Street were 
dreams of peace. 

i6 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

Admiral Diedrichs Picks a Quarrel with Dewey in 1898 
— Manila Bay — England Stands by America 

TN 1898 Wilhelm II. celebrated the third anni- 
* versary of the Kiel opening by seeking a quarrel 
with Uncle Sam during the Spanish-American 
War. For this purpose he sent a large squadron 
under Admiral Diedrichs to Manila Bay with 
orders vague enough for any purpose — particu- 
larly that of seizing something from the wreck 
of Spain's colonial empire. The German admiral 
was already a hero in German eyes, for it was he 
who had annexed Kiaochow to the Empire and 
at the moment of steaming to the mouth of the 
Pasig River a noble monument was being reared 
in his honour on the field of his bloodless but 
theatrical conquest. Prussia rears monuments to 
Victory, whichever side wins, which explains the 
quantity even though it does not always exalt the 
quality of her architectural display. The grandest 
of Prussia's triumphal arches is the Brandenburg 

242 



Admiral Diedrichs 243 

one of Berlin which commemorates the victory of 
France's ragged repubUcan army over that of the 
Prussian King Frederick Wilhelm II. at Valmy 
(1792) and the time is ripe for another Arch of 
Triumph in BerUn to similarly stir the patriotism 
of her people — maybe it will be called the Ameron- 
gen Thor or the Spa Exit or something equally 
calculated to recall the retreat of their army from 
before the Allies of 191 8 and the welcome of that 
army — as from another Valmy! The shabby 
success at Kiaochow had so turned the head of 
Diedrichs that he counted on an easy job so far 
as the contemptibly small force of Admiral Dewey 
was concerned. The Pope was of course on the 
side of Spain and most cordial was he also with 
the Kaiser. Diedrichs therefore fraternized with 
the Spanish garrison; contemptuously ignoring the 
port regulations laid down by Dewey. So far did 
this insolence go that although Germany was 
nominally neutral, her ships that plied between 
Hong Kong and the Phihppines neglected the usual 
courtesy of assisting in the mail service although 
they smuggled away the Spanish Governor and of 
course denied all knowledge in the matter. Had a 
pacifist then ruled in Washington or had another 
than Dewey commanded at Manila, the bullying 
of Diedrichs would have imposed upon some of 



244 Prussianism and Pacifism 

the Americans concerned ; for our fleet was short of 
coal and ammunition and was anxiously waiting 
for the regiments that were to come from Califor- 
nia and make the conquest complete. 

These pages being a study of Wilhelm II. and 
not a history of the Spanish War it is only neces- 
sary to recall to children that when war was declared, 
Dewey who commanded our ships in Asiatic waters 
received a very curt but comprehensive order to 
immediately hunt for and destroy every warship 
of Spain. He did so, and did it so completely that 
by sunset of May ist there was not a Spanish flag 
afloat east of Suez — there was practically nothing 
left of that enormous colonial empire which had 
been granted to her some four centuries ago by no 
less a landlord than the infallible vicar of God on 
Earth. 

The career of Diedrichs would read oddly else- 
where than Berlin, for he had first served in the 
army, then had spent some years on merchant 
ships, and finally entered the navy of Prussia in 
1865, after the Danish war. Dewey was a gradu- 
ate of the United States Naval Academy (Annapo- 
lis) at the beginning of our Civil War; and, in the 
next few years, participated not merely in such 
memorable actions as forcing a passage up the 
Mississippi under Farragut in 1862 but in dozens 



Admiral Dewey 245 

of minor ones which gave him a war experience 
second to no naval officer of his years. In all his 
life Diedrichs had less fighting afloat than Dewey 
in any one week between the fall of Sumter and 
the surrender of Lee at Appomattox. But Died- 
richs had one advantage over Dewey which he 
shared with most of his Prussian colleagues both 
ashore and afloat — our Admiral could not bring 
himself to say what he knew to be false. 

Dewey at first courteously called the German's 
attention to facts which any but a wilful enemy 
would have respected — ^notably that the American 
flag was in those waters to be saluted as that of the 
temporarily supreme. But Diedrichs persisted in 
ignoring the status of Dewey; his officers cruised 
about by day or night paying regard neither to the 
rules of marine law nor international courtesy, 
much less the much-talked-of hereditary friendship 
between Germany and America. Finally Dewey 
flatly challenged the German Admiral to fight and 
at that the bully collapsed completely — just as 
did his Kaiser when John Bull mobilized a fljang 
squadron after the Kruger dispatch. 

The details of this international episode I hold 
from the lips of both Admiral Dewey and his warm 
friend Admiral Chichester of the British Navy, 
both of whom I met for the first time in Manila 



246 Prussianism and Pacifism 

Bay during that very warm period. The whole 
story I heard repeated after a few years' interval, 
by our Admiral in Washington and by the Briton 
in London. From others who were there at the 
time I have verified every detail, so that for his- 
torical purpose few critical moments in military 
events have been narrated from so many angles 
and by men so truth-loving and sportsmanlike as 
that one in which Wilhelm used Diedrichs for the 
purpose of frightening Dewey. The attempt failed 
pitifully. Diedrichs had evidently a license only 
for lying, cheating, and bullying — not for precipi- 
tating the world war. Dewey was of such stuff 
that he would have fought his ships to the last 
and then gone down with his flag flying. But 
Great Britain had in Chichester (then a captain) 
a man equally fit for the emergency. Diedrichs 
sought to win him over to measures offensive to 
the American ; and sounded him cautiously. 

"What would you do," asked the German, "if 
I attacked the Americans?" 

"No one knows — excepting Admiral Dewey — 
and myself," was the prompt and decisive an- 
swer of this grand old sea dog. 

And then he ordered his ship to be so moored 
that any shot at Dewey would hit first a ship fly- 
ing the White Ensign of Great Britain — and this 



Admiral Chichester 247 

act was cheered in England for it symbolized the 
broad fact that it is the English-speaking race that 
has created what is now talked of as the Freedom 
of the Seas. England and America have for a 
century practically given joint support to this 
doctrine and our policy in the future should be 
to continue a practice that has raised no protests, 
excepting from pirates and a predatory Prussian 
dynasty. 

Wilhelm did us an unfriendly act in 1898; for 
when war was declared against Spain few Ameri- 
cans knew what the Philippines were, much less 
their geographical position or colonial importance. 
We would probably have handed them over to 
some self-styled native government, or, more 
wisely, to Japan. But the tactless behaviour of 
Wilhelm and his Diedrichs compelled Congress to 
plunge this country into a career of colonization 
which so far has not won for us the respect of the 
natives nor a return at all commensurate with the 
efforts expended. Germany did get the Carolines, 
which should have come to us as part of the Span- 
ish debacle; and so, spite of failure in the main 
object, Wilhelm saved his face, advertised the 
increase of his possessions in the Pacific, and 
promoted Diedrichs. Shortly before his death 
Admiral Dewey authorized a life of himself in 



248 Prussianism and Pacifism 

which the story of Manila Bay is told in simple, 
sailorly manner — the same story of which here I 
have given but the bare outline. Then, of course, 
Diedrichs was ordered to publish his version, 
which I read with no surprise for it merely denied 
each Dewey statement seriatim and proved con- 
clusively, so far as the official press of Germany is 
concerned, that throughout the Spanish War, and 
particularly at Manila, America had no warmer 
friend than the Kaiser! 



CHAPTER XXXV 

Wilhelm Visits Palestine — Proclaims himself the 

Protector of Christian and Moslem — The 

Boer War — Prince Henry Visits America 

TJAVING now made belligerent faces at Eng- 
^ land in 1896, at the "Yellow Peril" in 1897, 
and at Uncle Sam in 1898, it was now the turn of 
France; and so in the latter part of this year the 
Kaiser made a second visit to the Sultan's Empire, 
dressed himself in something intended to look like 
a crusader, and climbed the Mount of Olives. 
Here let us pause in hope of seeing the most pious 
of Lutherans fall upon his knees and silently medi- 
tate on the majesty of God and the nothingness 
of earthly power. But otherwise was the Kaiser 
programme ; for on the spot sacred to the founder 
of Christianity there now stood one who serenely 
challenged comparison with Jesus of Naizareth. 
Three times during his reign did Wilhelm visit 
the Sultan's land and three times also that of the 
Pope in Rome. With what words he edified the 

249 



250 Prussianism and Pacifism 

successor of St. Peter I know not but we do know 
that he secured the CathoHc vote of Germany for 
his military programme. In the land of the Ca- 
liphs his visits were equally fruitful — for a short 
while. Already in 1889 he had paid formal visit 
to the Sultan in Constantinople and laid the 
foundation for such concessions to German com- 
merce and railway construction as must have 
stirred any less pacific power than that of Queen 
Victoria. In the winter of 1898-9 the Kaiser 
earned still more laurels in his role of commercial 
traveller by loudly proclaiming, throughout the 
Mahometan world, that henceforth, France was 
deposed from her hereditary protectorate over 
Christians in the near East and that her place was 
to be filled — not by Russia or England — but by 
the parvenu Prussianized Empire! In 1899 came 
the Boer War; and with it such ferocious and uni- 
versal attacks upon England by German patriotic 
societies and inspired newspapers that once more 
we heard the rattling of an Imperial sabre. Those 
days were as dark for England as were with us the 
first three years of our Civil War when, to the dread 
of Washington falling into the hands of Lee, there 
was added the fear of a foreign intervention. In 
every German town Boer committees were formed 
who organized celebrations whenever news came 



Boer War 251 

of a British failure and who paraded jubilantly 
for every Boer success. It looked from day to day 
more warlike ; and had the Kaiser then proclaimed 
Der Tag it would indeed have been a popular one. 
The delegates of the insurgent Boer republic were 
received throughout the Fatherland with demon- 
strations of noisy joy; and one Boer General told 
me that they were counting confidently upon the 
Kaiser's assistance because he had promised this 
through one of his agents — a German officer. 
Paranoia is a species of chronic unrest, neuro- 
psychopathic in its nature and marked by sudden 
desires reversed with equal suddenness. The mad 
Ludwig of Bavaria answered to this prognosis; and 
so did Wilhelm II. but in a form less violent or more 
carefully concealed. Only on this hypothesis can 
I explain his violent changes from one mood to 
another. In the Boer War he had encouraged the 
mental attitude calculated to make war against 
England popular and then, without any warning, 
he suddenly decided that he would not receive the 
envoys from Kruger, but on the contrary soon 
afterwards boasted of having helped his grand- 
mother to suppress that insurrection. It is dis- 
concerting to one who has worked historically 
through the years of Bismarck, Moltke, and 
Wilhelm I. to suddenly cease looking for logical 



252 Prussianism and Pacifism 

sequence in the three decades of this Wilhelm. But 
unless we recognize at each step the wobbHng will 
power of one subject to mental disease we waste 
much time — for we seek not the fruits of consist- 
ency on trees rooted in paranoia. 

I had the honour of escorting the Kaiser on his 
first visit to the Sultan, when he paused in Athens 
in order to link together German and Hellenic 
interests through a marriage of his sister with the 
late unsatisfactory King of Greece. It was to me 
very interesting; for while the newspaper world 
saw in this excursion merely the gratification of 
Imperial curiosity, those in the suite of the Kaiser 
had very clear visions of a German Railway that 
would link Berlin with Bagdad, and a German in- 
fluence over the military education of Turkey that 
would ultimately facilitate operations against the 
back door of India. Other nations had hitherto 
limited their intimacy with Turkey to an occa- 
sional intervention evoked by broken treaties or 
massacred Christians; but Wilhelm II. disregarded 
all diplomatic precedents by noisily slapping the 
somnolent Sultan on the back; jovially claiming 
him as a dear old pal; and proving to him in con- 
clusive manner that France was now dead, Eng- 
land moribund, and only the HohenzoUern counted 
in matters of world Empire. Who could resist 



The Sultan 253 

Wilhelm when in jovial mood, and what Viziers 
could resist Wilhelm 's tall soldierly Prussian 
guardsmen and more particularly the financial and 
technical experts who called after dark and made 
costly presents and exchanged commercial promises 
and smoked nargilehs until they saw visions of the 
Far East, and Stambul once more the great bazaar 
of the world thanks to a new route to Bombay and 
Delhi — all Turkish under the protectorate of a 
Prussian Kaiser! 

India has seventy-five millions of Mahometans 
and on each visit to the Sultan's domains Wilhelm 
emphasized his desire to befriend the faithful, not 
merely on the Bosphorus and Euphrates but more 
particularly on the Indus and the upper reaches 
of the Ganges. By this he hoped to weaken not 
merely the British hold on India but France's 
prestige in Northern Africa. He succeeded in 
everything — at first! His primary impulses were 
violent and loudly applauded at home, but 1914 
disclosed the pitiful results of a policy bewildering 
in the multiplicity of its aims and disconcerting 
by reason of the contradictory character of their 
author. Wilhelm achieved little in the Mahome- 
tan world much as he conspired to stir a holy war 
against both France and England. He had come 
even to Morocco in 1906 for the purpose of dazzling 



254 Prussianism and Pacifism 

the market-place of Tangiers by words of comfort. 
All — all in vain! And even Russia, for whose 
rulers he had to me professed undying loyalty — 
this same Russia drifted slowly but steadily away 
to the arms of la belle France in spite of the loud 
but less interesting cries from the nymphs of the 
Spree and Havel. 

The Boer War may have caused another change 
in Wilhelm, for soon afterwards he made desperate 
and most conspicuous effort to advertise that 
mythical love which he claimed had always existed 
between America and the land of Frederick the 
Great. He may have been urged to this by noting 
that many Americans had joined the British army 
during the Boer War and that, apart from Ger- 
mans and Roman Catholic Irish, the people of the 
United States were in no mood to see England 
humiliated — least of all by a Kaiser who had 
shown his true disposition during the Spanish 
War. So Wilhelm staged a grand theatrical demon- 
stration that should prove to all the world that 
Diedrichs and Manila Bay were forgotten and that 
now' he felt for America the same affection that he 
had so warmly voiced for the Mahometan millions 
of the older world. 

He sent his brother Henry as his personal 
ambassador; and a syndicate of American mer- 



Prince Henry 255 

chant princes paid the bills incidental to railway 
excursions and costly banquets. The Emperor 
had not been invited — nor his representative — 
but every effort was made in the Berlin press to 
see in this reception by Americans that which they 
desired to see — namely a close alliance between 
Washington and Berlin and corresponding isola- 
tion of England. To this end Prince Henry had 
brought with him a big box filled with Prussian 
medals which he had been ordered to pin on the 
coats of such as had distinguished themselves by 
services to the cause of Deutschthum. But with the 
exception of Germans, no one here cared for such 
distinction, least of all the captains of industry 
who had spent most generously on committees of 
entertainment. It was to Prince Henry a mortify- 
ing experience when he was finally compelled to 
realize that Americans of German descent did not 
necessarily recognize the Kaiser as their Lord — 
on the contrary they usually insisted on being 
American in spirit no less than in formal allegiance, 
and they rejected contemptuously the pretensions 
of German consuls who desired to organize them 
after Prussian fashion. Prince Henry had to 
return home with a heavy heart and an equally 
heavy chest of decorations. He had seen much of 
life in the Far East and as a sailor had a better 



256 Prussianism and Pacifism 

insight into human nature than his irregularly- 
built brother. He could see that the courtesy of 
Americans in 1902 was little more than the morbid 
curiosity of a mercantile community to boast of 
having shaken hands with an Emperor's brother. 
The Kaiser sent over a statue of Frederick the 
Great and a job lot of casts representing mythical 
German heroes. He later encouraged an inter- 
change of professors and flattered inordinately 
those who came to him from our side. American 
universities blossomed out in a chain of societies 
united in the bonds of Kultur made in Germany, 
and systematic agitation resulted in forcing for- 
ward the language of the Kaiser so prominently as 
to not merely eclipse temporarily that of Racine 
and Corneille but to raise in the mind of Gross- 
deutschland the vision of a North America in which 
all tongues would yield before that of the prospec- 
tive world conqueror. 

But meanwhile Wilhelm noted angrily that while 
his brother Henry was winning all hearts by an 
affable manner and perfect command of the Eng- 
lish language, the really important figures in 
American official life were conspicuous by their 
absence and of these figures no one was so con- 
spicuously absent as the Admiral of the American 
Navy, the illustrious George Dewey. 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

Wilhelm 11. and Alsace-Lorraine — Speech in Metz — 
Treatment of Lord Roberts at the Kaiser- 
Manoeuvres 

A A /HEN I say that the popularity of Wilhelm 
' ^ n. in Prussia was owing to the fact that 
he was essentially of the Baltic type of Germany, 
I have also explained how it happened that the 
talent of diplomacy or tactfulness was largely 
lacking in his impulsive nature. He who grossly 
offended American feelings in 1898, apologized 
even more grossly in his efforts to win back our 
confidence through the purchase of a yacht and 
the distribution of cheap decorations. In England 
he rushed with equal violence from unnecessary 
effusive intimacy in one year to a warlike chal- 
lenge in the very next. With France his behaviour 
showed the same unstatesmanlike fickleness — 
leading him at one moment to pay marked honour 
to some Frenchman on a mission, and at the very 
next to sign a paper whose effect was to embitter 
17 257 



258 Prussianism and Pacifism 

even more the relations of Alsace-Lorraine and 
her military taskmaster. 

The grand Kaiser-Manoeuvres held about Metz, 
a year or so before the Kiel Canal opening, made 
me for the first time realize the extent to which a 
much be-flattered autocrat can deceive himself 
regarding the real things about him. He had been 
made to believe that Alsace-Lorraine was a 
triumph of Prussian assimilation; when he heard 
of a local disturbance in his conquered territory his 
police agents assured him that this was merely the 
work of a few agitators instigated by politicians of 
Paris. In order to advertize the alleged Prussian- 
ization of these most French of provinces he pur- 
chased a country seat near Metz; and, in that 
historic city, sought to make Frenchmen forget 
Custine, Ambroise Thomas, Paul Verlaine, and the 
Marechal Ney — by rearing dreary reminders of 
Hohenzollern dominion. As well seek to eradicate 
the memory of Calvin in Geneva by planting her 
beautiful embankments with a row of popes. 
Already Metz had been compelled to see two 
Prussian Kaisers planted in their midst on pom- 
pous pedestals, and now a third was to be reared in 
honour of another Hohenzollern who was conspicu- 
ous even amongst Brandenburgers for brutality in 
his own family and cruelty towards the enemy. 



Alsace-Lorraine 259 

Never did God offer to any monarch so full an 
opportunity for the display of generosity. Never 
had Wilhelm a better chance for undoing some of 
the mischief done during the past forty years of 
misgovernment on French soil. He was on a battle- 
field drenched by the blood of thousands who had 
here vainly struggled to stem the tide of Hun 
irruption in 1870; he had in his suite many guests 
of other countries than his own, and the military 
operations were all in sight of the French frontier. 
Today we need to be reminded that some twenty 
years ago many in France were inclined to accept 
the Prussian Yoke as a fact, very real however 
disagreeable. These loved their national traditions 
none the less, but in the face of dwindling birth- 
rate at home and doubling of population beyond 
the Rhine they saw little hope in the future save 
as one more province of the new Hohenzollem 
Empire. How often have I heard, in Paris even, 
expressions of admiration for Wilhelm when con- 
trasting the powerful commercial strides of his 
country with the lamentably uncertain movements 
of their successive cabinets, half socialist, half 
demagogue, that appeared bent upon finishing by 
the ballot box what had been but half accomplished 
by the treaty of Frankfort. The praise of Wilhelm 
was the cry of a people who recalled the glories of a 



26o Prussianism and Pacifism 

Napoleonic Empire and saw of the Kaiser only the 
outward power. They envied Germany her Kaiser ! 
They would have worshipped him had he been of 
their blood. But that was long ago ! 

So far from profiting by his opportunities Wil- 
helm, on the contrary, made the Metz manoeuvres 
an occasion for administering to every Frenchman 
such a slap in the face as must have smarted upon 
the cheeks of the least patriotic of pacifists. He 
called about him all the notables of the neighbour- 
hood that they might listen whilst he made an 
oration magnifying the virtues of his Uncle Fried- 
rich Karl. As guest of the Kaiser I had been 
bidden to seats reserved for the mighty but for 
obvious reasons I preferred to mix in the French 
audience that stood about the base of the statue 
and thus feel at first hand the effect of the Kaiser's 
oratory. 

His voice was harsh — almost hissing — and he 
jerked out his words with the intenseness of one 
who is condensing a momentous message — a piti- 
less judge passing sentence upon a people that has 
incurred his v/rath. I listened keenly and with in- 
creasing wonder. The ravings of a madman could 
not have sounded more strangely. Had he ad- 
dressed his French subjects in French the blow 
would have been hard; but he chose the rasping 



French Sentiment 261 

nasal snarl that marks the Prussian officer scolding 
his recruits in a Potsdam garrison and, in the 
tongue of their conqueror, he truculently vaunted 
the glories of Germany and reminded them that 
he was now their master. 

"Germans you are — " screeched he with menac- 
ing look — "Germans have you always been and 
Germans shall you be for ever, so help me God and 
— my good sword!" 

This was his peroration, if my memory serves, 
and while no loud sounds were uttered at the close 
of this horrible speech, on all sides of me men 
looked meaningly at one another; shoulders were 
significantly shrugged and the bolder ones courted 
police denunciation by whispering meditatively — 
"Nous verrons ca!'' and similar ejaculations — 
oracular though not complimentary. 

We must praise God for the blindness of Wil- 
helm in matters diplomatic ; for, when we consider 
the extent to which England and France, no less 
than these United States, were drugged by the 
drowsy doctrines of pacifism, it required only time 
and opportunity for Prussian tactlessness to rouse 
the civilized world from the spell put upon them 
by such slogans as "Peace Without Victory" and 
"Too proud to fight." 

In England, Lord Roberts recognized the preda- 



262 Prussianism and Pacifism 

tory policy of Wilhelm and urged preparedness so 
strongly that the Government of the day sought to 
silence him much as President Wilson and his 
colourless Cabinet have employed the political 
boycott against conspicuous Americans who have 
said aloud what the discreet say to themselves. 
Lord Roberts was guest of the Kaiser at the grand 
manoeuvres shortly before the Kiel opening. He 
was not only the most important soldier in British 
service but with his forty years of war practice in 
India, represented a volume of military experience 
rare at that time. The Emperor knew this, and 
he knew also that the victor of Kandahar fluent as 
he was in dozens of tongues beyond the Balkans, 
knew neither French nor German. Moreover it 
was of importance that the English commander- 
in-chief should return home with much military 
glamour but little information. Consequently the 
Kaiser selected as official guide and aide-de-camps 
throughout the days of war simulation one of the 
many empty-headed cavalry subalterns who are 
tolerated in a regiment of the Guards because they 
are noble and rich and can glitter on court occa- 
sions. This young lieutenant knew only a few 
words of elementary English and had apparently 
orders to steer Lord Roberts away from every part 
of the field where happened the things most in- 



Lord Roberts 263 

teresting to a soldier. It was a delicate situation 
for the British guest who naturally felt compelled 
to obey the suggestions of one selected by his 
Imperial host. With me no such obligation existed, 
and I am happy to think that I earned the warmly 
expressed gratitude of this beloved warrior by 
stepping between him and his wilfully ignorant 
guide and arranging matters so that henceforth 
it was Lord Roberts who ruled the situation and 
not his obtrusive Prussian. My part was easy, 
for I had a warm friend in the late General Fuku- 
shima, then a Major in the Japanese Army, and 
military attache. With Fukushima I made a 
treaty by which henceforth Lord Roberts missed 
nothing of interest — for the Japanese Major be- 
came his beacon and by this light Lord Roberts 
never moved in vain — nor myself either. This 
meddHng of mine was no doubt reported to the 
Commander of the army corps if not to the Kaiser 
himself; but neither could then have interfered 
without provoking on my part such a public 
protest as would have betrayed to the world the 
manifest purpose of Wilhelm to shower empty 
compliments on an illustrious British General 
while at the same time preventing him from seeing 
anything of interest. 
At a later date the Emperor attempted to ex- 



264 Prussianism and Pacifism 

tenuate the enormity of his behaviour towards the 
gallant Briton by handing him some ribbon or 
medal, but it came too late. Lord Roberts could 
not mistake the disingenuousness that lurked be- 
hind the genial words of his Imperial host — much 
less could he fail to profit by an insight into a mili- 
tary machine terrible by reason of its huge pro- 
portions and more terrible still because of the 
spirit animating its war lord„ 



EPILOGUE 

Wilhelm — League of Nations— Freedom of the Seas- 
Moral — Finis 

TOWARDS the close of the eighteenth century 
the incomparable historian of Roman glory 
and decline paused in his great work in order to 
indulge in that most elusive luxury— prophecy. 
He had been engaged in tracing the career of a 
great people through centuries of varying fortune; 
he was weary of slaughter and fondly looked for- 
ward to a world in which wars would be humanely 
conducted, fewer in number, or even wholly sup- 
pressed. He wrote at the close of a century in 
which soldiering had been the chronic occupation 
of Christian states and he was convinced that the 
time had arrived for such a league of nations as 
would effectually control the savage impulses of 
any prospective Genseric, Alaric, or Attila. He 
referred particulariy to the royal philosopher who 
sat upon the throne of Prussia and a blue stocking 
Czarina whose court on the Neva suggested the 

265 



266 Prussianism and Pacifism 

Happy Valley of Rasselas not to say the Groves of 
Academe. Gibbon reviewed the world of his day 
and saw with joy the noble triumphs of art, litera- 
ture, and science. He saw religious persecution 
waning and monarchy daily assuming forms more 
in harmony with popular aspiration. The Huns 
and Vandals, thought he, had been eliminated 
from their ancient habitats or weaned from their 
pristine propensities; and the forests whence had 
rushed the hungry hordes who overran the Europe 
of fifteen centuries ago had given place to cultiva- 
ted farms, smiling villages, and centers of Kultur, 
The skin-clad chief had been replaced by a Fred- 
erick the Great — the Cossack raider by a Cather- 
ine Romanov. Whence then could ever come 
another menace to civilized Europe? Surely not 
from Berlin or the now enlightened Empire of 
Russia! The great historian cast his gaze east- 
ward to the plains of Central Asia — even to the 
valley of the Yangtse — and there too he found 
comfort in the reflection that Europe had a bul- 
wark too strong for any future Tamerlane or 
Genghis. 

In short the dream of Gibbon was the dream of 
Woodrow Wilson — as it has been the dream of 
every dreamer after every great period of war. 
Man becomes a pacifist through the security which 



Pacifism of Gibbon 267 

his fighting fathers have purchased. We would 
gladly forget the fighting and fondly hope that our 
possessions are forever safe. The age of Gibbon 
was in Europe and North America remarkable 
for the number of great men who favoured the idea 
of a world peace. We had our Washington, our 
Hamilton, our Franklin; and our seven-year war 
of Independence so far from making us quarrel- 
some had on the contrary led us to abolish every 
military safeguard the moment a truce had been 
declared. 

In France Rousseau and Voltaire were but a 
fraction of the many brilliant writers who regarded 
war as a relic of barbarism, to be scouted by philo- 
sophers and relegated to the limbo of poisoned 
daggers, thumb screws, and the "King's touch." 
In England, David Hume, Joseph Priestly, Dr. 
Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith — who can name the 
galaxy of learning, wit, and social reform for which 
that age is justly famous. It was axiomatic then 
that every philosopher was an enemy to war; 
every writer believed in a league of peace. The 
pacifism that ruled the world just before the fall of 
the Bastille is no less remarkable than the spread 
of the same disease in the years which preceded 
the raid of 1 9 1 4. Indeed, were it worth while many 
theses could be compiled in order to prove that 



268 Prussianism and Pacifism 

nearly every great war has been preceded, if not pro- 
voked, by an all but universal sense of security ; and 
a corresponding indisposition to undergo the fatigue 
and danger of war. These examples need not be 
limited to any one country, continent or period — 
the poisonous character of pacifism can be studied 
under mandarins in China and Rajahs in India 
no less than under a Thomas Jefferson or a William 
Jennings Bryan. The Empire of the Caesars owed 
its fall to the pacifistic propaganda of Christian 
socialists quite as much as to any other cause ; and 
if these United States become some day a province 
of Prussia the future historian will say once more 
that no nation deserves independence when it 
refuses to fight in defence of its flag. 

The Great War has closed by another defeat of 
the Huns and Vandals — another retreat to their 
prolific haunts beyond the Rhine. This war has 
cost more in blood and treasure than previous wars ; 
but we have no reason to suppose that Germany 
will not renew hostilities so soon as she has re- 
paired the damage done to her own people and 
property. Whoever preaches that this is the last 
of the Hun raids may possess the book learning of 
a Gibbon but book learning alone is not enough 
in such a field. I have had rare opportunities of 
looking the Hun between the eyes in every military 



How America was Saved 269 

district along the Baltic and in the spongy forests 
of the upper Spree; and, as the result of many 
years dedicated to a species of research unknown 
to those whose frontiers are their shelves of books, 
I bring away the feeling that the Prussian of today 
is the same as the Vandal who sacked and massa- 
cred a thousand years ago. The past raids of Ger- 
manic hordes were usually preceded by periods of 
pacifism in Rome or Constantinople, just as the 
insulting behaviour of Wilhelm to Uncle Sam was 
provoked by the pacifism that ruled in Washing- 
ton. Wilhelm was checked in his designs upon 
New York by the courage and tenacity with which 
the brave men of France and England blocked his 
path to Calais and London. For three years the 
manhood of civilized Europe struggled and died; 
and by that struggle America was saved. For- 
tunately for us the Kaiser himself quickened our 
conscience and stirred our sense of shame not 
merely by insulting our Ambassador, but by 
flaunting German submarines in American waters 
and murdering on the high seas innocent passengers 
travelling under the sanction of international law. 
This war is but one in a chain of wars that com- 
menced when the first German saw that his neigh- 
bour had something. Wilhelm might have died in 
the odour of pacifism if not sanctity had he not 



270 Prussianism and Pacifism 

been tempted beyond his powers by the sight of 
neighbouring states rich in goods but poor in war 
material. Had England been well armed on land 
and Belgium so well prepared as republican 
Switzerland, think you that Wilhelm would have 
ventured upon his desperate raid ? And should the 
day arrive when Great Britain shall permit Ger- 
many to cross the ocean with impunity — would 
not the Hun occupy our commercial centres until 
she had extracted the last dollar? 

Our politicians now use nebulous phrases like 
Freedom of the Seas, League of Nations, Rights of 
Self-Determination, etc., because they are but too 
eager to accept any solution rather than the simple, 
although less agreeable, one of maintaining an 
adequate military force all the time. A League of 
Nations means nothing but material for college 
debating societies. It has been tried for thousands 
of years and works well only when all the world 
practises the Sermon on the Mount and the Lamb 
nestles against the jaws of the Lion. Germany 
yearns for leagues of nations — she yearns more still 
for seas on which she may with freedom once more 
fly her flag of destruction. The predatory state 
that prepares its forces in secret will be the chief 
beneficiary of this humanitarian scheme and the 
only enemy she dreads is the ocean policeman John 



The Hun in Manhattan 271 

Bull. Our liberty in the seven seas has been 
threatened by none save the galleys of the Hun. 
If we wish to make freedom on the high seas even 
more secure, we have but to unite our forces with 
those of England. Leagues of nations cannot 
make people wise or courageous; and should a 
league now be formed it would not prevent the 
demobilization of our army or provide us with a 
far-sighted Congress. The Hun gives no long 
notice when about to strike and after our cities 
shall have been sacked it will be cold comfort to 
learn that a League of Nations would have come 
to our assistance if we had only been patient — for 
a year or two. Let us honour the peacemakers; 
let us labour for brotherhood amongst nations ; let 
us rear churches to him who preached on the 
Mount of Olives, and let us even believe that man 
is improving in some respects if not all. But the 
man who loves his country should feel that the 
first duty of Government is to make that country 
safe from attack. In the infinite changes that have 
occurred throughout past ages, governments have 
had to adapt themselves to ever-shifting condi- 
tions; and we call those men statesmen who have 
most quickly made the alliances and combina- 
tions necessary for a definite purpose at a definite 
crisis. 



272 Prussianism and Pacifism 

Our American bosom swells with pardonable 
pride when learning that the political pundits of 
France rise respectfully and bow with humility 
before the scholarly rhetoric of our autodidactic 
president. We have for a century gloried in the 
memory of Benjamin Franklin receiving honours 
from the French Academy ; but today not only does 
the world of science and art make ovation to 
Woodrow Wilson but before him stand bareheaded 
the President of France to say nothing of that 
venerable but valiant protagonist — the beloved 
Clemenceau. 

Is it strange if Americans feel the reaction from 
this memorable moment ? What wonder that men 
worship the wisdom of one whose words have 
apparently conquered the understanding of Eu- 
ropean statesmen and made a revolution in public 
sentiment throughout the world! We are a busy 
people and harassed by endless problems. We 
have no time to read history. Intellectually we 
feel that "sufficient unto the day" is the news- 
paper thereof. We are glad to hear that the old 
world applauds with courtesy when an American 
rhetorician emits platitudes which would excite 
smiles if offered by other than the nation's guest. 
Leagues of nations have been from the beginning 
of the world and they have always been failures, 



Honors for Wilson 273 

particularly when directed by a pacifist. No one 
knows this better than the old-world scholars vv-ho 
clapped when Wilson spoke. Leagues of nations 
are old as pacifism, teetotalism, bolshevikism, 
feminism, and all the other isms with which we are 
plagued by so-called humanitarians. All that they 
teach has been anticipated by many centuries, and 
all we need if we would once more win back our 
national health, is to resolve never to open a 
modern book until we had first absorbed the wis- 
dom buried in the pages of Plutarch, Aristophanes, 
Herodotus — and many more who lived before the 
discovery of America. 

Whether Wilhelm be ever called back to Berlin 
as was his grandfather seventy years ago ; whether 
a HohenzoUern be once more Kaiser in Prussia; 
whether the German League of 1870 hold together; 
whether the next generation produce another 
Genseric and another raid across the Rhine — these 
are matters of secondary speculation. Our duty 
today is more practical. Prussia must be made 
harmless if the world is to be made safe; and 
Prussia will stay harmless just so long as she is 
compelled to — and no longer. If history do not 

teach us this, then have I written to no purpose. 
18 

THE END 



Prussian Memories 

By 

Poultney Bigelow 



Mr. Poultney Bigelow passed some years 
of his boyhood in Prussia, and in later years he 
made various sojourns in Germany. At the 
time of his school experience, his father, the 
late John Bigelow, was Minister in Paris. The 
father had friends among the Court officials in 
Berlin, and young Bigelow had the opportunity, 
during his school work, of associating as a play- 
mate with the recent Emperor William. His 
boyish impressions were corrected or confirmed 
through the knowledge secured in his later 
visits to Prussia. He writes with full knowledge 
and with freedom from prejudice. He has in 
fact an appreciative memory of his playfellow 
William, and speaks with appreciation of other 
noteworthy characters with whom he came into 
relations. In summing up, however, the char- 
acter, the aims, and the policies of Prussia, he 
arrives at the conclusion that the success of 
Prussia in its attempt to dominate Europe and 
to create a world empire would bring serious 
trouble upon Germany, upon Europe, and upon 
the world. Mr. Bigelow has a keen sense of 
humor and his narrative is dramatic, spirited, 
and thoroughly readable. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York London 



GENSERIC 

King of the Vandals and First 
Prussian Kaiser 

By 

Poultney Bigelow 

M.A.. F.R.G.S. 
Author of " Prussian Memories," etc. 

The author draws a close analogy between 
Genseric and his Vandal hordes of the fifth 
century, and the masters of Prussianism to- 
day. This ancient chief of militarissmus who 
sacked Rome, and with wild wantonness plun- 
dered, devastated, spread horror, in all countries 
lining the Mediterranean shores is compared 
favorably with the " All Highest " of Central 
Europe who in the enlightened twentieth century 
has permitted his hosts to commit unspeakable 
atrocities in Belgium and other countries where 
the iron hand has fallen. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York London 



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